FACTORES ECONÓMICOS

The Estate Tax debate was chosen, in part, because it fits Mayhew’s definition of position- taking extremely well Mayhew (1974). The Estate Tax was never in any serious danger. The Democratically-controlled Senate was never going to repeal the Estate Tax and the Republicans in the House knew it. Nevertheless, the Republican leadership of the House scheduled votes on repealing the Estate Tax for several years running. The purpose of these votes, and attending debates, was to put the Democrats on the wrong side of an issue. The Republican leadership wanted to highlight a case where the Democratic party- line was out of step with public opinion. However, the strategic game went deeper, into the symbolic content of tax discourse. One of Frank Luntz’s most recognizable contributions to political discourse was the “Death Tax” label that Republicans applied to the Estate Tax. Luntz had found in focus groups that Americans reacted negatively to something called the “Death Tax” but were more favorably disposed toward “Estate Tax.” This rhetorical move was part of the larger symbolic effort to demonize the federal taxation. The Republican leadership wanted to force Democrats to defend an unpopular stance and, in the process, to shift the terms of debate over the correct size of government. This is a clear example of the majority party using control of the agenda to force votes that work in their long-term electoral favor, as is commonly expected in the literature on legislative behavior Aldrich and Rhode (2000); Cox and McCubbins (1993); Clubb, Flanagan and Zingale (1980). This section and the next examine how this strategic play influenced the language that Representatives used. If Representatives’ symbolism is shaped by the strategic context, there should be evidence that the Republican leadership’s move in this case put the Democrats in an uncomfortable symbolic position.

This section looks more carefully at the connection between legislators’ ideological tendencies and the language they used to defend their votes on the Estate Tax. In a balanced rhetorical field, we would expect the Estate Tax to break down along ideological lines, with conservative legislators the most clearly opposed to the measure and liberals being its most ardent defenders. However, this was not an even fight. The Republican leadership knew that Democratic representatives could not easily abandon the Estate Tax because liberal activists and voters supported the levy. On the other hand, dogmatically defending the Estate Tax risked playing into Republican strategy of portraying Democrats as “tax-and-spend” liberals. In this unbalanced strategic context, Republicans’ ideological commitments should have translated more cleanly into how they defended their votes than was the case for Democrats. As Democrats defended the Estate Tax, they should have sought to symbolically dissociate liberal ideology from a particularly unpopular liberal position.

Table 4.6: Predicting Word-Usage with Member Ideology Conditional on Party

and Vote

Predictor Democrats Republicans

Opposing Repeal Supporting

coefficients (s.e.) Member Conservatism −.01 .37∗∗ (.08) (.12) Constant .33∗∗ .51∗∗ (.05) (.06) r2 .00 .13 N 83 82 Clusters (Member) 50 55 **=p<.01

Note: Unit of analysis is the Wordscores estimate for each speech made on repealing the Estate Tax in 2003, 2003, and 2005. Speech scores calculated using the legislative debate from 2001 as the reference text. Larger language scores indicate word usage was more similar to reference texts that favored repealing the estate tax. Member conservatism captured by

dw-nominate1st dimension estimate: higher values indicate more conservative voting record.

One implication of this claim is that Democrats’ ideological stances should be less clearly visible in how they defended their views than was true for their Republican coun- terparts. While Republicans wanted to associate their broader policy priorities with their opposition to the Estate Tax, Democrats were looking for ways to mask the ideological

underpinnings of this vote. The results presented in Table 4.6 reflect precisely what is expected. A strong connection between dw-nominate scores and Wordscores estimates on the Estate Tax has been shown already, but a major portion of the covariance is between Democratic supporters of the Estate Tax and its Republican critics. Here, the focus is on variance within the two sides of the issue. On the Republican side (Column 2), ideological differences are positively and significantly associated with their measured attitude on the Estate Tax. Speeches delivered by Republicans with conservative voting records were more clearly identified by Wordscores as being opposed to the Estate Tax. This is indirect evidence that the discourse surrounding the Estate Tax drew on ideolog- ical differences between Republicans that influenced their voting records more broadly. Moderate Republicans opposed the Estate Tax, but they did not use all of the same argu- ments or symbols as did their more radical colleagues. On the other side of the aisle, the story is quite different. Column 1 shows that ideological differences between Democratic defenders of the Estate Tax were completely unrelated to how they spoke during floor de- bate. The symbols used to defend the Estate Tax do not differentiate between moderate Democrats and more liberal members. Again, this is indirect evidence, but it does fit with our received understanding of how strategic pressures shaped the Estate Tax debate. The Estate Tax was ideologically advantageous to Republicans, and their language reflects differences in attitude that should be present when an issue is falling along ideological lines. The last thing Democrats wanted was for this to become an ideological mandate, and their language shows no signs of ideological structure.