The other day, when it was announced that President Bush’s budget will eliminate the “nutrition-in-a-box” program that provides healthy meals to senior citizens, Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl asked, “How do you justify doing something like this, while at the same time giving people like Herb Kohl huge tax cuts?”

Kohl is a multimillionaire.

Would that more of the well-to-do would ask themselves the same question.

Under the Bush tax plan, the wealthy are making out like bandits, while the poor and middle class are seeing programs they depend on being reduced or abolished.

And, judging from how little the Bush beneficiaries have protested this inequity, the well-to-do must feel that what they are getting what they deserve.

Closer to home, the same thing is happening.

After years of pushing to ease the tax burden on lower-income earners, Rep. John Knight’s proposal to raise the minimum income tax threshold from $4,600 to $22,900 is finally getting serious consideration.

But there is opposition.

It rankles the well-to-do that Knight’s proposal does not include a tax cut for them (as Gov. Bob Riley’s plan does). But most galling to the rich is that revenue lost by raising the income-tax threshold would be made up by eliminating the federal income tax deduction, which is a nice break for the rich, but doesn’t mean much to everyone else.

Advocates for the affluent are already attacking the elimination of the deduction as a tax increase on the middle class — a deceptive strategy, indeed unethical strategy, but one that works on middle-income earners whose tax burden is only slightly less that that borne by the poor.

What we need is for Rep. Knight and his supporters to find a way to give the middle class a break as well, but more than that, we need the wealthy of our state to do what Herb Kohl did: Denounce the unfair tax code we have and let it be known that they will support efforts to change it — even if it costs them money.

Alabama has many decent citizens who just happen to be financially better off than most folks. It is time that their voices were heard.

INSIGHT

Legislature attacking women’s rights

By Cheryl Sabel
Special to The Star
02-24-2006

After the House Constitution and Elections Committee’s shameful vote to deny citizens the right to vote on whether to call a constitutional convention, supporters of reform put their faith in the Senate equivalent of the same committee. Tuesday, their trust was rewarded with a 10-0 vote to approve the plan and send it to the full Senate for debate.

We thank the 10 senators for their bold and principled stand on this issue. We urge their House counterparts, who were not so bold and principled, to profit from their example.

Of course, the fight for a new state Constitution is far from over. There are many, including Senate Majority Leader Zeb Little, D-Cullman, who are for the bill but doubt if it has enough support in the Senate to get it passed. Maybe not, but here is a chance for our increasingly influential Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston, to take a stand for reform and work to bring his fellow Republicans over to that side.

In the House, Republicans have almost universally opposed a convention, but in the Senate this opposition appears softer. Sen. Marsh could be the key to giving Alabamians a chance to vote on the issue and on their future.

Thus far, all the reasons for opposing a convention have been superficial and self-serving. If a constitutional convention will be dominated by special interests (as opponents claim), then why do the biggest special interests in the state oppose a convention?

A new Constitution will no more expand gambling than the current Constitution inhibits it — Alabamians are gambling all around us and will continue to do so. A new Constitution, written by modern Alabamians, is more likely to propose a reasonable solution to the problem.

As for taxation, a new Constitution is just as likely to lower taxes on the majority of citizens as it is to raise them.

And a new Constitution is no threat to the legal property rights of citizens.

These are scare tactics employed by those who like things the way they are and are afraid the people don’t.

The Alabama Senate has taken the first step to letting the people vote on this issue. Now is the time for lawmakers who trusted citizens to elect them to let those same citizens vote on a constitutional convention.

There is no good reason not to.

A bill working its way through the Alabama Senate would require lobbyists to reveal what they spend to entertain and inform lawmakers (including the governor) and entice them to do their bidding.

Today, a lobbyist can spend up to $250 a day on a legislator and not report a dime of it.

Nothing is inherently criminal with deep-pocketed special interests doing this, but if they do, the public who elects the lawmaker has every right to know.

If this bill passes, the public will.

But while we are at it, perhaps it is time to do more than reveal money spent. Perhaps it is time to limit the access lobbyists have to legislators, especially when a bill is being debated.

For some time, critics of the lobbying tactics of the Alabama Education Association have complained about executive secretary Dr. Paul Hubbert working the floor during committee meetings, making sure lawmakers know that he is there and that the AEA is watching.

More recently, in the House committee debate over whether the people of Alabama should decide for themselves if a constitutional convention should be called, The Huntsville Times reported how “Paul Pinyan, an Alfa lobbyist, continually whispered into the ears of members.”

How was it that a lobbyist could get so close to committee members during a meeting? And what was he whispering? And to whom?

Was he bending the ear of local representative Randy Wood? Telling him to forget that back in 2002 he told The Anniston Star, “If we’re going to ever grow in Alabama, we’ve got to have a new Constitution.”?

Was he telling Rep. Steve Hurst from Mumford that no one would remember that back in 2002 he told the Talladega Daily Home, “Yes, (the Constitution) should be changed. How should we do it? Let the people vote on how they want it done.”

If that was what Pinyan was doing, he did his work well, because both men decided to vote the lobbyist’s line.

Should Pinyan or Hubbert or any other lobbyist have that sort of access at such a critical time?

What do you think?

MONTGOMERY — August may be holiday-free, but House members are taking steps to change that.

The House Education Finance and Appropriations committee approved a bill Wednesday that would make the first full weekend in August a sales-tax holiday. The bill now will go to the House for a vote.

The proposed legislation would remove the 4 percent state sales tax during the holiday on purchases of clothing items costing less than $100, on school-supply items costing less than $50, and on electronic items (for example, computers and computer accessories) costing less than $750.

The first weekend in August usually is the busiest time for back-to-school shopping.

Cities and counties would have the option of removing local sales taxes from those items. Anniston charges a local rate of 4 percent, for a total sales tax of 8 percent.

In Oxford, which has one shopping mall operating and another scheduled to open in July, Mayor Leon Smith said he didn’t know enough about the bill to say definitively whether his city would consider suspending sales tax for a weekend.

“I don’t think three or four days (without a sales tax) is going to make or break anybody,” Smith said of the tax-free days.

Anniston Mayor Chip Howell said the issue has not come before the Anniston City Council.

“It would be a tough call to make,” he said. “We’re on a tight budget, and a weekend would cost $50,000 to $60,000.”

Local business leaders said the holiday would help the area retain shoppers who might cross the border to take advantage of sales-tax holidays in Georgia.

“Communities like ours that are closer to borders with other states see the greatest impact,” said Sherri Sumners, president of the Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce. “I think it will be good news for our businesses, and certainly for the consumers.”

Rep. Mac Gipson, R-Prattville, said Georgia, Florida and Tennessee have sales-tax holidays that hurt retail sales in Alabama.

“Now we’re about surrounded with sales-tax holiday states,” he said.

The sales-tax holiday would cost the Education Trust Fund about $3.5 million. Paul Hubbert, executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association, who supported the bill, said the money would be made up in a bill sponsored by Rep. Terry Spicer, D-Opp, which would require entities that sell property to state agencies to collect sales taxes. That bill also passed out of committee yesterday.

If the sales-tax holiday bill is signed into law, the first such holiday would take place this year from Aug. 4-6.

Alabama Retail Association president Rick Brown, who strongly supported the measure, said the holiday would not lead to business declines before or after it takes place.

“(Georgia businesses) see a dramatic increase in business (over the holiday),” he said. “And the thing is, they don’t see a decrease in business on either side of the holiday.”

Sales-tax revenues go into the state’s Education Trust Fund; bills affecting collection of taxes generally go to the House Education Finance and Appropriations committee.

Items that would be covered
• Clothing purchases (apparel and footwear) at $100 or less per item;
• Single purchases of computers and computer electronics at $750 per item or less;
• School supply purchases (textbooks, notebooks, pencils, paper, writing instruments, crayons, art supplies, rulers, book bags, backpacks, handheld calculators, chalk, maps, globes, dictionaries and thesauruses) at $50 per item or less.

Items specifically excluded
• Skis
• Swim fins
• Roller blades and skates
• Accessories (jewelry, handbags, luggage, umbrellas, wallets, eyewear, watches, watchbands, belts)
• Computer furniture
• Computer devices, software or peripherals intended for recreational use
• Non-educational video games
• Radios
• Compact Disc players
• Headphones
• Sporting equipment
• Telephones
• Copiers
• Office equipment, furniture or fixtures.

MONTGOMERY — Educators urged a Senate committee Tuesday to vote against a bill that would require property reappraisals every four years instead of annually.

“We are about to put politics back into the middle of taxation,” said Paul Hubbert, executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association. “Instead of letting a system work that is already working in several counties, we’re going to put politics into it.”

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, would change language in the Alabama code that currently requires reappraisals to be carried out every year.

While that language has been in state law since the mid-1970s, governors and state legislators ignored it. The state Department of Revenue began phasing in annual reappraisals in 2003. Calhoun County started in 2004, and about 30 counties now make annual appraisals. All counties would go into annual appraisals by 2009.

Byrne, however, says he’s heard numerous complaints from revenue commissioners and homeowners in Baldwin County, which Byrne represents. A strong housing market there has boosted property values, and annual appraisals have led to tax jumps each year.

“My constituents tell me that when there will be a jump (in taxes), they would rather have it every four years, because they don’t want to face a tax increase every year,” he said after the meeting of the Senate’s General Appropriations committee.

Educators at the meeting argued that the annual reappraisals give school districts a reliable source of funding and made it easier to plan for future years.

“What annual reappraisals have done … is create a degree of stability for the poorer school districts in this state,” said Craig Pouncey, assistant state superintendent of education.

Sandra Sims-deGraffenried, executive director of the Alabama Association of School Boards, said many districts already have floated bonds for projects based on revenues coming in from annual reappraisals.

“We’re almost halfway there,” she said. “Let’s give it a chance to work.”

Byrne has drafted amendments to his bill to restrict the quadrennial reappraisals to residential property and allow counties to set the time for reappraisals. But he countered some of the criticism coming his way, saying revenue commissioners in his county are not able to do reappraisals on every home every year.

“I think it probably is better for the school systems, but we have to balance that out against the big concerns of revenue commissioners and the serious concerns of taxpayers,” he said.

Excuse us while we revisit the constitutional issue, again.

A constitutional convention — an idea dealt a setback in the state House this week with the help of Reps. Randy Wood and Steve Hurst — is a grassroots attempt to bring transparency to state government.

It is not, as many of the Legislature-controlling special interests will have you believe, a sinister attempt to extract God and implant taxes.

The not-so-brave Reps. Wood and Hurst have additional concerns, including the influence of the special interests themselves.

Sure the special interests will try to grab control of a convention, if our lawmakers find the courage to let the people vote on it. But they will be doing that in the daylight, out where people can see what they are up to.

Right now, those same special interests have lobbyists creeping through the back halls of the Senate and the House, prowling around, whispering this and that and spreading money all the while.

You, the citizen, the voter, the taxpayer, the good people of Alabama, you never see that, you never get a glimpse of what a corrosive impact that has on the day to day workings and long-term policies of this state.

So here’s your choice: you can get behind a constitutional convention, vote to send a sunshine legislator to that convention from your legislative district, where a new document will be written in the wide open, or you can choose to stay in darkness, letting the same interests that have kept a stranglehold on this state for generations continue to keep us back.

Send your state senator and your state representative, even Reps. Hurst and Wood, a message. Tell them you want the sun to shine, tell them you are tired of the darkness in Montgomery.

As if we need more evidence that the Bush administration wants to balance the books on the backs of the poor, in comes information that the president’s budget request for 2007 will cut some $85 million from programs that fight poverty, help families, and strengthen communities.

In Alabama the blow to Community Action Agencies is particularly harsh. If the president gets what he wants, there will be no more Community Service Block Grants, which have funded community-designed and community-based programs to fight neighborhood problems on the ground level. Gone too would be the money for Rural Community Facilities, this at the very time our Legislature is trying to figure out how to fund rural development initiatives.

In an ironic twist, considering the president’s much ballyhooed announcement that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, the budget proposes to cut the federal Weatherization Assistance Program by more than 30 percent.

Under this agency thousands of homes have been made more comfortable against winter’s blast and weather-related illnesses have been reduced. In addition, weatherizing has made homes more energy efficient — a small, but important contribution to energy conservation. With the Bush budget, that contribution will no longer be made.

Rather than weatherize and conserve, the president (as a result of Congressional action) proposes a small increase in the Low-Income House Energy Assistance Program, which will help a bit with higher energy costs, but will reduce consumption only because high prices will force the poor to use less fuel and feel the chill.

But the most unkindly cut is the proposed funding for Head Start, one of this nation’s most successful programs for helping children from poor families get ready for school and for a better life. Last year Head Start was cut by one percent, which may not sound like much until one translates that into the 581 Alabama children who will be, if we may borrow a phrase, “left behind.”

Hopefully our congressional delegation will oppose these cuts and find another way to reduce the deficit. Maybe by making the well-to-do carry a little more of the load.

Now that’s an idea.

Gov. Bob Riley deserves a lot of credit for trying to do something about Alabama’s grossly unfair income tax structure. The fact that we begin assessing income tax on a family of four that earns as little as $4,600 is a tragedy. So the Governor’s desire to fix it is admirable. Unfortunately in fixing one thing there is danger he is going to break something else — public education.

In the strange climate in which we live these days, seeking tax dollars for any purpose has come to represent some form of ultimate evil. It has almost become a mantra, a mindless chant that has no basis in reality. No taxes! No taxes! No taxes!

That kind of fiscal religion is fine if you live on Fantasy Island, but that is not where we live. We live in Alabama where we already pay less in state and local taxes than almost anywhere else in the country.

And we have the social services and public schools to show for it. Take a drive sometime into some of our poorer counties where the full effect of our low taxes can be seen crumbling all around you.

Which brings us back to Gov. Riley’s plan to fix our tax system. Being a political realist, Gov. Riley knows the best way to get a tax break for anybody is to give a tax break to everybody. His proposal does just that. Unfortunately, when you cut taxes it reduces revenue. In this case it will cost the education budget $28 million a year.

Now don’t get me wrong, we really need to change our tax structure, and we really need to stop taxing the working poor in our state. It’s cruel and shameless.

But cutting revenue to public education is not a prudent way to fix this problem. We ease the burden on the poor with one hand, but diminish one of the critical institutions for solving poverty in the long run with the other hand.

There is a better way. Alabama Arise in conjunction with Representative John Knight has put together a proposal which brings Alabama’s tax structure in line with the federal tax structure, especially in the area of the income tax threshold — that is, the point at which working families begin to be assessed income tax.

In both the Riley plan and the Arise plan, the $4600 threshold is removed. But in the Riley plan it is only moved to $15,000. That’s $15,000 for a family of four. I don’t know about you, but I think raising a family on that amount of money is going to be hard to do. Assessing state income tax on top of other life essentials is not going to help.

The Arise plan sets the threshold at $22,800 for a family of four. And the Arise plan is revenue neutral. That means it neither increases nor decreases state revenues. I guess sometimes holding your own is progress.

The tax cuts for the poor are offset by eliminating the deduction for federal income tax. Alabama is one of only three states that allow state tax payers to deduct their full federal income tax. Eliminating this deduction allows us to raise the threshold while preserving education funding. Arise analysts point out that with their plan, three out of five Alabama tax payers pay less.

Listen, if something is broken, by all means let’s fix it. But let’s don’t break something else trying to get it done, especially when we know there is another way.

James L. Evans is pastor of Auburn First Baptist Church, Auburn, Alabama. He can be reached at faithmatters@mindspring.com.

Here is the situation.

Alabama teachers need and deserve a raise, a significant raise. Their pay is in no way commensurate with the importance and the difficulty of the job they do. Spend a day in the classroom with one of them and see if you don’t agree.

Alabama schools need repairs. Alabama students need more and better computers and Internet access. Visit our older schools (and most are older) and see if you don’t agree.

Alabama taxpayers — lower- and middle-income tax payers — need a break from regressive and unfair sales and income taxes. Compare their tax burden with the light load shouldered by the well-to-do in our state and see if you don’t agree.

But we do not have the money to do it all. And no one in the Legislature is bold enough to propose a way to get it.

So it follows that the special interests — and we are all are part of some special interest — are going to work to get what they can or keep what they have.

Education, represented by the powerful Alabama Education Association, has made raises its top priority and if the education budget that just came out of House committee passes the Legislature, education will have its way.

Republicans — representing those who want teachers to forgo raises for capital outlays and tax cuts — are attacking this budget as selfish and fiscally unsound. (Both points are valid to a degree, but no one hears the special interests that support the governor’s plan jumping up and volunteering to make the sacrifices he is asking the teachers to make.)

Meanwhile, those Alabama taxpayers who need and deserve tax relief will likely get little or none while those who neither need nor deserve such help will continue to benefit from our unfair system of revenue collecting.

That, in a nutshell, is Alabama’s situation.

Meanwhile in Montgomery they strut and fret, preen and posture, but nothing really changes.

Especially the status quo.

MONTGOMERY — Round Two of this year’s debate over the state constitution featured invocations of God, condemnations of racist language and appeals for and against amending Alabama’s 105-year-old document.

More than 70 people packed a small hearing room Tuesday as the Senate Committee on Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics and Elections met for a public hearing on a bill that would allow voters to decide in November whether to call a constitutional convention.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Ted Little, D-Auburn, would put a yes/no question on the ballot. If approved, a special election to choose constitutional convention delegates would be held next April, with the convention assembling in July.

A constitution would have to be completed by May 1, 2008, and would be submitted for voter approval the following November.

Speaker pro tem Demetrius Newton, D-Birmingham, has introduced a similar House bill. A public hearing on that legislation last month drew hundreds of supporters and opponents. The House Constitution and Elections committee may vote on that bill today.

Tuesday’s hearing, like previous ones, often became heated, with speakers debating the merits and deficiencies of the 1901 Constitution more than the bill in question.

Bill supporters argued that the 1901 constitution is outmoded, filled with racist language and limits home rule for counties.

Lenora Pate, executive director of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, presented a petition with 67,000 signatures in support of a convention and said that the popular vote would provide the final say on a constitution.

“We believe firmly that this bill under consideration today would require a vote of the people, which is the ultimate safeguard,” she said.

Others, like Kathy McMullen of the Alabama Parent-Teacher Association, said the hundreds of amendments made to the constitution since its passage show that it is a bad document.

“Our Alabama Constitution has been constitutionally amended 772 times since 1901,” she said. “A basic governing document that needs such tweaking is one that doesn’t work well to begin with.”

The document’s racism also was cited. “The Constitution of 1901 was formulated to be racist,” said Bob Robertson of Huntsville. “It is racist. It is overtly racist in its wording. It disenfranchised black people.”

Opponents argued that a new constitution would somehow open the door to higher taxes, removal of God from the state’s governing document and limitations on the rights of Alabamians.

“The Constitution of 1901 is stronger and better than the U.S. Constitution,” said Bill Anthony, a CSX retiree from Talzell. “It enshrines 26 rights we don’t have under the federal constitution.”

Opponents also attacked the motives of bill supporters, accusing them of receiving money from the Ford Foundation, a generally liberal think-tank, and from other outside organizations.

Kenneth Freeman, executive director of the Alliance for Citizens’ Rights, said the organizations with petitions were “fertilized by money and watered by deception.” He handed committee members biographies of reform supporters who spoke in favor of the bill at the House hearing last month.

That drew strong criticism from Sen. Curt Lee, R-Jasper. “People have a right to voice their opinions without you trying to smear them like this,” Lee told Freeman. “We need to talk about these issues without getting personal.”

Pate said after the meeting that her organization received its money from membership dues and had never received any grant money.

OK, let’s face the facts. Although Montgomery is crowded with special interests and those who lobby for them, two stand out as the 900-pound gorillas in that jungle. As matters currently stand, not much will change in this state without their approval.

They are — no surprise here — the Alabama Education Association (AEA) and the Alabama Farmer’s Federation (ALFA).

And we need to understand that while both organizations do some good things for the people of Alabama, the people of Alabama are not their main concern. They are in business to look out for their members, who in AEA’s case are Alabama teachers and educational administrators, and in ALFA’s case are those who own and farm agricultural property.

Both are powerful. Both have deep pockets. And both have legislators whose votes they can count on.

Though ALFA and AEA are technically nonpartisan — they hand out money to members of both major parties — in reality both play a partisan role in today’s political debate.

Republicans have identified AEA as the major roadblock to the sort of reform their party advocates. Many Democrats feel the same about ALFA.

Both, of course, are right.

And nowhere can this better be seen than in the controversy over constitutional reform.

ALFA has been outspoken in its opposition to a constitutional convention. Instead, if reform and revision must take place, they prefer that the Legislature do it, because it has the clout to head off any changes in the current property tax structure or in the benefits and exemptions agriculture enjoys.

Meanwhile, AEA, though not so vocal as ALFA, is also less than enthusiastic for a constitutional convention because, in that sort of gathering, education’s representatives might not be able to preserve the constitutional arrangement that earmarks most sales and income revenue for the Education Trust Fund.

Or to put it simply, constitutional reform is not going to come about until AEA and ALFA are willing to quit being special interests and be interested in the people instead.

And they aren’t going to do that unless the people of Alabama make them.

The federal budget, for all its bewildering detail, sketches a remarkably clear picture of the priorities of any administration. Congress always puts its own stamp on the fiscal design, but when you have a situation where the same party controls both elected branches, as Republicans do now, the modifications tend to be at the margins.

What the budget released last week shows about the Bush-Republican regime is essentially a very simple story. Financing military operations has taken an increasing share of the federal dollar, with health care and Social Security eating up much of what remains.

The squeeze has been felt by a variety of other domestic programs, but especially — and significantly — by those where Washington is supposed to be a partner of state and local governments.

There’s been a lot of attention given — and properly so — to the way Uncle Sam has commandeered National Guard troops from the states for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. But an examination of budget trends shows that Washington has been just as effective in siphoning money from the states and cities to help finance our military obligations.

National defense outlays rose from $304.8 billion in 2001 to $535.9 billion in the current fiscal year — an increase of 76 percent. In the same five-year span, health care and Medicare, combined, rose from $389.6 billion to $611 billion, up 57 percent. Social Security and other federal retirement and income-support spending went from $702 .8 billion to $915.3 billion, an increase of 30 percent. Everything else the government does — at home and abroad — went from $466 billion in 2001 to $645.6 billion in 2006 — an increase of 39 percent.

During those five years, the public debt rose from $3.3 trillion to $5 trillion — a measure of the degree to which we have failed to pay for the government activities Congress and the president have approved. Even with interest rates declining, the net interest bill has risen from $206.2 billion annually to $220 billion.

What this has meant is that federal aid to states and cities has been short-changed. While federal payments to individuals — through programs like Medicaid, welfare and food stamps, where states share the costs — grew rapidly in this period, those for infrastructure, housing, education and other domestic purposes grew more slowly, even with the addition of large sums for homeland defense.

The trend is particularly striking when it comes to capital expenditures — the financing of highways, airports, mass transit, sewage treatment plants and community development. Measured in constant dollars, they grew only 10 percent in five years — and the federal contribution actually declined when compared to the sums that state and local governments were investing.

This year, once again, the Bush administration has targeted urban programs for cutbacks. Last year, the president tried to kill the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG ) program in its historical home in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and substitute for it an alternative that would be run out of the Commerce Department.

Responding to protests from mayors of both parties, who said that CDBG was their most flexible tool for spurring investment in blighted downtowns and neighborhoods, Congress rejected the Bush plan. But this year the president wants to cut CDBG funding by $1 billion, a reduction of more than 25 percent.

In a joint statement from 14 state, local and nonprofit groups, the cut was described as “devastating” and a “serious threat” to ongoing projects. The statement noted the irony that the administration has used CDBG as the best vehicle to deliver $11.5 billion of emergency funding to Gulf Coast communities devastated by last year’s hurricanes, but nonetheless wants to take the program out of many other cities.

Rep. Michael Turner, the Ohio Republican who heads the House task force on urban affairs, conducted hearings last year on CDBG and has recommended improvements in the program. But he said he is concerned about the impact of Bush’s proposed cuts on a program he called “essential to our nation’s communities and neighborhoods.”

“Reducing funding to these programs hurts people trying to recapture their neighborhoods and revitalize their communities,” Turner said.

This is but one of many examples of the way important domestic programs are being jeopardized by the priorities of this government — and especially by Bush’s adamant refusal to raise the revenues needed to support the ever-more-expensive war effort.

David Broder’s e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com.

Next week promises to be a busy one for the Senate Committee on Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics and Elections.

Sitting on the table, but ready to be removed, is the much-discussed bill that would ban municipal use of eminent domain for revenue or commercial development, a reaction (some say a knee-jerk reaction) to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that cities could do just that. (It remains unclear how this would strengthen the existing law prohibiting the same thing, but it will make some folks feel better, so why not?)

However, when it was noted that the bill as written would also prevent cities from using eminent domain as a means of cleaning up urban blight, the issue was tabled until that could be resolved. We urge the committee to quickly settle the matter so that a city can continue to clean up areas that hurt both its image and its economy, and then move on to other things on the committee agenda.

Such as defending democracy.

On Tuesday, the Senate committee will take up the bill that will allow the people of this state to vote on whether to hold a constitutional convention.

There is no defensible reason to deny citizens the right to make this decision.

There will be those in attendance who will raise all sorts of objections to a convention, but the committee must keep in mind that their opinions, no matter how strongly they are held and forcefully they are argued, are no more important than the opinions held by the many Alabamians whose daily lives are too busy to allow them the luxury of addressing the committee.

The only way the voices of those citizens can be heard is at the ballot box.

To deny them that opportunity would be to deny the very thing that has made this nation great.

Let the people speak.

Let the people vote.

MONTGOMERY — As lawmakers prepared for next week’s hearings on several tax-reform proposals, activists and some legislators gathered at the state capitol Thursday to praise one of them.

Rep. John Knight, who has proposed raising the minimum income tax threshold from $4,600 to $22,900 and abolishing the state deduction for federal income tax, spoke at a meeting of Alabama Arise held in the “tunnel,” the lowest level within the Old State Capitol.

Knight told the gathering that his plan would provide more immediate relief to families than would other tax-reform plans currently in the legislature.

“I don’t know why it’s so difficult to get it across the board to our colleagues that our income-tax structure is unfair,” Knight told a group of supporters.

Alabama’s income-tax threshold — the income level at which a person must begin paying taxes — is the lowest in the nation. Several tax-reform plans aimed at raising the threshold have been introduced in the Legislature.

Gov. Bob Riley, in his State of the State address, proposed raising the minimum level to $15,100 over five years, while also expanding dependent and income deductions.

Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, has proposed raising the minimum threshold to $12,000, abolishing the sales tax on groceries, and getting rid of the federal income-tax deduction.

Sen. Sundra Escott, D-Birmingham, has proposed extending income-tax thresholds to $10,000 for a single person and $15,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

Knight also has filed a separate bill that would provide an earned-income tax credit to low- and middle-income families.

Alabama Arise has endorsed Knight’s proposal but praised legislators from both parties for addressing the income-tax issue. Kimble Forrister, state coordinator of Alabama Arise, said the organization hopes to see some kind of compromise emerge among the various proposals.

“There’s been a good bit of back and forth (already),” he said. “But if people dig in their heels and hold some position that no one can pay more, that’s not helpful to anyone.”

Repealing the federal income-tax deduction would affect the wealthiest taxpayers most, as federal income taxes tend to take more as income increases.

Knight and Arise argue that Knight’s plan is revenue-neutral, that revenue lost from raising the income-tax threshold will be made up by income from repealing the federal income-tax deduction.

Knight also gave some qualified support to the governor’s plan, though he criticized it for not taking full effect until 2011 and for ultimately taking $233 million from the education trust fund. “In this state, poor people need good quality education better than anyone else,” he said.

The governor argues that his tax plan provides a tax cut for all taxpayers, unlike Knight’s plan, which specifically targets low- and middle-income earners, and that it would take effect only if the state economy grows 3 percent each year.

Speaker of the House Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, said Thursday afternoon that Democrats are planning to hold joint House and Senate hearings on the various tax proposals Wednesday. Riley’s plan, however, may face a struggle: Tuesday, the House will take up the Education Trust Fund budget, which does not factor any of the costs of Riley’s tax proposal into its figures.

“Is there a danger the competing bills could cancel each other out because of confusion? I don’t know,” Hammett said. “I think we need public hearings on them, and allow the committee system to work.”

Hammett said, however, that the federal income-tax deduction repeal would be “more difficult” to pass in an election year, a factor Knight acknowledged earlier in the day.

“That’s the most difficult part of the proposal,” he said. “But if we don’t address the federal income-tax deduction, we’ll take substantial money from the education budget.”

It was one of those political stage plays, part comedy, part tragedy, all farce.

Let’s set the scene.

Stage right are Alabama Republicans, in whose ranks are Christian conservatives who want religion back in the schools the way they feel God meant it to be.

Enter, stage left, Alabama Democrats, who want to show Christian conservatives that they are just as pro-God (and pro-Jesus) in the classroom as the GOP claims to be.

And to prove themselves such, Democrats introduced a bill that would allow public schools to teach a course in Bible “literacy.”

Then, with the actors in their places, the action began.

“Oh no,” cried the Republicans, “this is only a political scheme by Democrats to make themselves look like champions of the conservative Christian cause.”

“Fie on that,” Democrats responded. “Your opposition reveals that GOP godliness is just a political front.”

“Fie back at you,” came the Republican chorus. “Our opposition isn’t political. We are just as much for Bible literacy as you, even more, but we oppose the bill because it mandates a particular textbook that presents a particular point of view, and the Legislature should not be mandating what the public schools teach and teach from.”

(A voice from the rear — “If you teach Bible literacy, the Bible should be the text” — was quickly shushed.)

And so the battle was joined.

And quickly it ended.

The Republican ranks stood firm, and with the help of a few wayward Democrats, they blocked the measure.

Bible literacy will not be taught in Alabama public schools because Republicans feel that the Legislature has no business picking out texts and endorsing their content. That is a matter for educators to handle.

And we agree.

And we look forward to legislators remaining true to this principle when the time comes for our schools to select texts in history, government and, of course, biology.

The legislature should stay out of those choices as well.

MONTGOMERY — Gov. Bob Riley, backed by a mostly Republican audience, urged the Legislature Wednesday morning to pass his tax-cut proposal.

“It doesn’t pick winners or losers,” Riley said at a press conference on the steps of the Statehouse, backed by about 30 legislators. “Everyone wins with this plan.”

Riley has proposed raising the minimum income tax threshold from $4,600 to $15,000 over five years, while raising personal exemptions from $1,500 to $2,000 and dependent exemptions from $300 to $2,000.

Riley’s plan is one of several floating in the Legislature. Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, has proposed raising the minimum threshold to about $22,000 while eliminating the federal income tax deduction on state taxes. State Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, has introduced a bill that would raise the minimum threshold to $12,000 and eliminate the sales tax on groceries.

Riley’s office estimates his plan would eliminate income tax filings for 174,000 people. Riley said that while he hopes to reduce the sales tax in the long run, he did not think it would be practical at this time.

“I hope one day we can take the sales tax off groceries,” Riley said. “That is too expensive, even with the money we have today. We can’t do it without busting the budget.”

Alabama Arise, an advocacy group based in Montgomery that backs Knight’s proposal, says Riley’s plan would save family of four about $370 a year when fully implemented; Knight’s would save roughly $760. It estimates Bedford’s savings at about $536 a year.

Alabama Arise plans a rally for Knight’s proposal today.

An Education Trust Fund budget, passed out of committee later in the morning, did not include funding for Riley’s proposal.

Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston, and Rep. Randy Wood, R-Saks, attended the governor’s rally. Marsh, who has introduced legislation to remove the sales tax from non-prescription drugs, said he felt the plan was the most fair.

“What bothers me about the other plans is that they leave out the middle class,” he said.

Much like a driver pulled over for speeding, Alabamians need a wake-up call about their state constitution, warns Birmingham attorney and constitutional reform activist Lenora Pate.

"We’re on a collision course, and we don’t even know it," Pate told the Anniston Rotary Club at its Tuesday meeting.

Pate touted bills currently in the Legislature that would call for a Nov. 7 vote on convening a state constitutional convention.

The bills, HB 109 and SB 52, are in legislative committee. They would have to be passed by the Legislature before the question of a constitutional convention could be placed on the ballot.

If such a referendum were successful, voters would elect convention delegates in 2007, according to the bills. A statewide vote in 2008 would approve or reject the constitution generated by the convention.

The effort sparked a rally last month in Montgomery, but groups who claim that a new constitution would lead to higher taxes oppose the bills.

Pate, who is active in Alabama politics and served on Gov. Bob Riley’s transition team, is a co-chair of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform.

"We’re a grassroots movement," said Nancy Ekberg, co-chair of ACCR’s Birmingham chapter.

Alabama’s 1901 constitution, Pate told the Rotary Club, is antiquated and overly complex, and encumbers the concept of self-rule.

"It’s a sinful document, and it’s fundamentally flawed," Pate said.

The state constitution is flawed, she said, because it centralizes local decision-making in Montgomery instead of with local governments.

Such a process wastes tax funds, she said.

"It’s insulting to you and me as voters in Alabama," she said.

Also, Pate told the club that the 1901 constitution was designed to suppress blacks and poor whites.

Pate has spoken to civic groups across the state in recent months regarding constitutional reform.

She was asked to speak by Rotary Club member Richard Thompson, financial adviser for Raymond James.

Pate noted that two members of the state House Constitution and Election Committee, Randy Wood and Steve Hurst, represent districts in or near Anniston.

Thompson said he wanted Rotary Club members, composed mostly of community leaders and businessmen, to be better informed about constitutional reform.

"A little knowledge is a terrible thing," Thompson said.

MONTGOMERY — The Senate on Tuesday passed three bills aimed at reforming sentencing in Alabama.

The bills, drafted by the Alabama Sentencing Commission, are similar to versions passed by the House last month. They would give judges voluntary sentencing options, clarify the definition of second-degree property theft, and allow judges to consider DUI convictions in other states when considering punishments for Alabama DUI convictions.

The House, however, took up nine of the Sentencing Commission bills, while the Senate on Tuesday only considered three; state Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, who sponsored Tuesday’s legislation, said the remainder of the bills are still in Judiciary Committee.

The voluntary sentencing bill would give judges guidance in imposing sentences over 26 different felonies, and allow them to consider alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders. Smitherman said the voluntary sentencing guidelines would make sentencing more flexible and uniform.

“In some areas of the state — and I’m exaggerating a little bit — in certain areas of the state, if you steal a piece of bubble gum, you’ll get 10 years,” he said. “In other parts, if you steal a piece of bubble gum, you’ll get probation.”

The bill passed easily, but some Republicans raised objections. Sen. Larry Dixon, R-Montgomery, was concerned the sentences could gut the state’s Habitual Felony Offender Act, which requires that offenders with three previous felony convictions be sentenced to life imprisonment on their fourth conviction. He also criticized the bill for not spelling out the sentences.

“There is nothing in the bill that says what the sentencing standards really are,” Dixon said. “That concerns me.”

But Sen. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, said no law-enforcement agency had objected to the bill.

The property-theft bill sets second-degree property theft property values at between $500 and $2,500; the previous limits were $250 to $1,000. The minimum value drops to $250 when a defendant has been convicted of first or second-degree property theft or receiving stolen property in the first and second degree.

The DUI bill, if signed into law, would allow judges sentencing DUI offenders to consider DUI convictions in other states within the previous five years.

Think you’ve got Troy King’s number? Think again, advocates for mentally retarded Alabamians can tell you.

The Arc of Alabama set up two toll-free numbers last month, one directed to Gov. Bob Riley’s office and the other to Attorney General King’s. The Arc of Alabama encouraged its membership to use the lines to call offices of both state leaders and urge them to do something about the burdensome waiting list people seeking state mental retardation services must endure.

Recently, this page reported on how King is trying to keep a lawsuit over the pitiful funding for Alabama retardation services out of federal court. What we didn’t realize was that while not wanting any static from the feds, he apparently didn’t want to hear from advocates for the mentally challenged, either.

Why else would he have had the ARC’s toll-free phone line to his office disconnected? Is it possible that an attorney general doesn’t want to hear from all of the public he serves?

The AG was not paying the toll; it was funded by a nonprofit agency. It’s not like this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time as advocates try to make it easier to connect constituents to public servants. The AG’s office couldn’t even cite to reporters a statute allowing such a line to be disconnected.

We commend the governor’s office, which says it has received fewer than 200 calls on the subject, for keeping the line connected.

The attorney general has a lot of explaining to do. We’re disappointed but not surprised that King’s anti-federal government dogma spurs him to drag his feet on the case. His objection to "running state government through consent decrees," as King’s spokesman put it, is more important to him than the approximately 1,400 Alabamians waiting for mental retardation services.

Blatantly trying to squelch public comment from those advocating for improved mental retardation services is an equally disturbing stance.

Neither serves the state of Alabama and its people.

Out there in the never-never land of the anti-tax lobby, they talk grandly about how the "surplus" in the Education Trust Fund and increased tax collections serve as a "shining example of how businesses and a strengthening economy grow revenue" and of how the state has all the income it needs.

It’s true that the economy is stronger, that businesses are doing better and that tax revenue is up. But what the anti-tax lobby avoids saying is that the "surplus" we enjoy is there because we are not spending money on things we need, so we have money left over.

And what are some to the things we need that the "surplus" can’t cover?

Just look at the current tussle between the governor, who wants to spend the "surplus" on capital improvements, and Paul Hubbert of the Alabama Education Association, who wants it to go to classroom materials, teacher salaries and a rainy-day fund. Both men identify places where the money needs to be spent, but there is not enough money for both. So when it is all said and done, some things will be left undone.

But there is more, much more, that we need to do. Some of our most vulnerable citizens, the physically and mentally retarded, cannot get the help they need because the state cannot provide it. Our prisons are overcrowded because we cannot afford to build new ones. Our highways go unpatrolled because we cannot train and hire enough troopers. Court cases are backlogged and justice is denied because state labs do not have the personnel or facilities to process the evidence.

Just recently, a circuit judge ruled that the state was violating state law by not inspecting coal mines as required. The reason the inspections are not being carried out? Money.

So when you hear anti-tax talk about how the state has all the resources it needs to do what it needs to do, ask the anti-tax ideologues if they would prefer that the things listed above never be done.

Which, in reality, is what they are saying.

MONTGOMERY – In one corner stands a Christian conservative who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.

In the other stands a Christian conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and abortion.

Voters who make moral issues their number-one priority can find a safe haven in Alabama politics, particularly in the GOP primary. Relatively little separates Gov. Bob Riley and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on moral issues.

Still, Moore appeared to be a formidable rival for Riley after his 2003 refusal to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building followed closely on the heels of Riley’s defeat on Amendment 1, which would have raised taxes on the wealthy by about $1.2 billion.

In January 2005, Moore led Riley 43 to 35 percent in a University of South Alabama poll, in part because of his popularity among religious conservatives.

But a booming economy has helped Riley turn things around. The most recent poll by the University of South Alabama, conducted in October, showed Riley with a 44 to 25 percent lead on Moore, with 31 percent undecided.

Moore’s recent campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination has tended to downplay his own actions. Instead, he has hammered the governor on his 2003 campaign for Amendment 1.

“It does seem Judge Moore is trying to broaden his agenda,” said Jess Brown, a political science professor at Athens State University. “He probably understands intuitively he can’t win the primary as the Ten Commandments judge.”

In response to questions on the subject, Moore sent a statement to The Anniston Star emphasizing his opposition to annual property reappraisals, “special interests” and taxes.

“Morality is always an issue,” Moore said, “but, in addition, our platform also includes legislative reform, stopping unnecessary taxation and wasteful government spending, enhancements to education and dealing with illegal aliens.”

There may not be a tremendous religious difference between Riley and Moore, both Southern Baptists. However, political observers say Moore’s strength on faith issues needs to be joined to a compelling argument to the business community.

Past polls have shown that God and mammon both are important to primary voters. A University of South Alabama poll taken in January 2004 found that 78 percent of Republican primary voters considered themselves born-again. Business interests helped Gov. Riley raise $3.8 million for his campaign in 2005. Moore reported raising about $310,000, mainly from individuals.

“I think the general assumption is the business community would like a conservative governor who is as uncontroversial as possible,” said David Lanoue, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama. “Controversy is bad for business, bad for persuading companies to move to Alabama and bad for persuading other people to come here as well.”

It may not be a surprise, then, that Moore’s campaign Web site emphasizes the judge’s stand on issues like property tax reappraisals.

“He’s made a strong effort to expand his issue base beyond a Christian conservative message,” Lanoue said. “His problem is he’s so associated with that message that it’s hard for voters to see him outside that context.”

Moore hasn’t abandoned the tablets for the spreadsheet. Last month, the judge was named honorary chairman of a newly formed Alabama Coalition against Same-Sex Marriage at a press conference at the state Capitol. Moore stood next to Jody Trautwein, executive director of the coalition, who urged passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Alabama, saying same-sex marriage constituted a threat to family life in Alabama and touting Moore as a leader in that movement.

“We want several hundred to sign up,” Trautwein said. “We need an army to rise up. And who better to help lead an army than a West Point graduate, a man who faithfully serves his God, his family, his church, his state and his country?”

Moore said the amendment would be needed to protect the state from “activist judges,” who would overturn state law on the matter. A federal Defense of Marriage Act already prevents states from recognizing same-sex marriages in other states; Alabama’s Legislature passed a similar bill in 1998.

“Marriage is ordained of God and we should recognize that, like we should recognize God in society,” Moore said.

Riley is no less firm on these issues, campaigning against both same-sex marriage and asking the Legislature in his State of the State address to pass a law that would treat a fetus as a person in cases where the mother was killed or assaulted. As a congressman, Riley was given a rating of 100 by the Christian Coalition in 1999 and 2000, according to Project Vote Smart.

“As far as the Christian voter, the governor reaches out to them by looking out for them every day in his capacity as governor,” said Dax Swatek, a spokesman for Riley’s campaign. “It doesn’t need to be or have to be a campaign issue, because people know where Bob Riley stands on those issues.”

Riley’s campaign, Brown said, doesn’t seem to stress those issues.

“Judge Moore seems to say the primary agenda for Alabama is morality and faith and sin and controlling sin and so forth,” he said “I’m not so sure if you judge Riley as congressman or a governor that his primary thinking is on religious issues. I think, to his credit, he’s talked more economics than lifestyle questions. When he’s addressed those issues, he’s taken a position with the religious right that they don’t throw cold water in his face.”

The governor did emphasize Christian concern for the poor when selling his Amendment 1 proposal in 2003. But Riley faced equally determined religious opposition from the Christian Coalition of Alabama (the Christian Coalition of America, however, supported Riley’s proposal). While John Giles, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, said it was not his organization’s policy to endorse candidates.

“Our position is out there on the tax issue,” said Giles, who said it was up to individual voters to decide whether that issue would determine their vote in the primary. “I can say (Amendment 1) won’t help Riley.”

Moore’s challenge presents problems for the governor, though. Riley can’t count on the conservative Christian vote as he could in his close election against former governor Don Siegelman in 2002.

“He did very well because his opponent in that election was viewed as Mr. Lottery,” said Brown. “He didn’t have to work for it. He won it by default.”

Moore also has shown that he can lose fundraising contests and still win elections; despite Associate Justice Harold See taking in considerably more money, Moore won the 2000 chief justice’s GOP primary race with 56 percent of the vote.

Cross-filing by black evangelical Democrats might also assist Moore in the primary, though Lanoue said the campaign should not count on that. “There’s a general rule in politics that any candidate who depends on crossover voting is generally going to lose,” he said. “We talk about crossover voting, but generally little of it occurs.”

Steven Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University, said Moore probably will do better with voters who put moral issues front and center. But he doesn’t expect either candidate to dominate in that area because too many other issues will be in play.

“There will be a split in that election,” Brown said. “There was a time when (Christian conservatives) solidly backed Riley. There was a time when they would have gone solidly behind Moore.”

With the state economy healthy, the challenge may be for Moore to come up with a compelling reason for Republicans to dump Riley. The former chief justice does not appear to have found that reason.

“Previous polling two years ago showed Moore a lot more competitive, but things are going well in the state,” said Keith Nichols, an associate professor of political science at the University of South Alabama and director of the university’s polling group. ”The economy is going up, and there have been no more scandals or problems with the Riley administration.”

That may make the difference for many voters.

“I think a lot of Republicans voting in the primary are going to ask themselves this question: Do we want to win in November?” Athens State’s Brown said. “A lot will say, Riley is in office, he’s already defeated the Democrats once, and they’ll start to emphasize his re-electability. If we nominate Moore, we could have problems in our own party.”

Special to The Star

The Anniston Star’s unhealthy obsession with criticizing the conservative positions of the Alabama Farmers Federation, and likely a majority of its own readers, once again led the paper down the road of tabloid journalism in the Jan. 30 editorial “Allies in opposition.”

Rather than debating the idea of a constitutional convention with facts, The Star resorted to innuendo in an effort to discredit the Federation and another conservative organization.

Using those standards, we could argue The Anniston Star and Osama bin Laden are philosophically similar because they both oppose the war in Iraq.

But that wouldn’t be fair. And, neither was the Star’s Jan. 30 editorial.

The fact is, the only people pushing for a constitutional convention are those who want to raise taxes. The Federation’s support of an article-by-article approach to constitutional revision is reasonable because it would preserve what is good about the document and would hold elected officials accountable for any changes that are made.

A convention would give broad authority to an elite group of delegates who would likely be controlled by special interests and would not be accountable to voters.

As for the argument that the Federation fought a plan to preserve tax breaks for family farms, The Star should be more forthcoming with the facts. That plan was a ploy to garner support for Amendment 1 — a $1.2 billion tax hike that two-thirds of voters opposed.

The plan failed, and today, Alabama has a budget surplus — without a billion dollars in new taxes. Now, The Star and others are trying to use a constitutional convention to do what they failed to accomplish with Amendment 1.

Fortunately, there are still conservative groups like the Federation that are willing to stand up for what voters want. Often, the Federation’s positions align with organizations like the Christian Coalition, but this is no more conspiratorial than the fact that the majority of voters shared our organization’s opinion of Amendment 1.

The Federation’s policies are set by our members, beginning at the local level. This is true of our position on the Constitution as well as our members’ decision to oppose legalized gambling. I’m sure the Christian Coalition’s positions also reflect the views of its members — unlike The Anniston Star’s opinions, which seem to be completely out of step with those of its readers.

The Alabama Farmers Federation makes no apologies for our positions, and as long as we are able, we will continue working to ensure Alabamians have a Constitution that preserves voters’ rights and demands accountability from government.

Jerry Newby is a farmer from Athens and is president of the Alabama Farmers Federation.

Every time Alabamians discuss allowing poor folks to pay less of their limited resources in taxes and requiring folks who can afford it to pay more, someone (probably from the upper-income bracket) denounces the idea as part of a plot to “redistribute the wealth.”

But in reality, this sort of tax reform is part of an effort to reverse a redistribution of wealth that began with the writing of our 1901 Constitution and continued with a host of amendments that favor the rich over the poor.

Wealth can be distributed and redistributed in many ways. This is how Alabama does it.

The men who wrote the Constitution did so with the clear intent of not only making sure that the rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor, but that whenever state services were needed it would be the poor who paid a bigger percentage of their income for whatever they got.

Constitution writers did this by first protecting property, which the rich owned, from taxation. Thus, money was distributed among the wealthy by not taking it from them — a reverse process but just as effective as a check in the mail.

This forced the state to turn to sales taxes to support essential services. These taxes took money out of the pockets of both rich and poor, but the rich, who hardly felt it, benefited more from what the state provided — another advantage to the affluent.

The income tax, when first passed in the midst of the Depression, did tax the rich and not the poor (and even though the state was on the verge of bankruptcy, the rich protested mightily). But over the years, the rich fought back attempts to raise the threshold at which payment begins and increase the amount paid by those in the upper-income brackets. So today, our income tax, like the rest of our revenue system, distributes money to the rich.

In other words, our Constitution was written to protect the wealth of the wealthy, and since 1901, the document has consistently distributed and redistributed that wealth upward.

Which is why no one should be surprised to find a vast income gap between people at the top and the bottom of the economic ladder. And it is growing, just as authors and supporters of our current constitution intend it to. Over the past two decades, the average income of the wealthiest 20 percent of Alabama families has risen 60 percent (from $65,878 to $105,337) while the average income of the 20 percent at the bottom has grown only 25 percent (from $11,722 to $14,765).

Many factors have contributed to the widening gap between rich and poor (federal tax policies, for example), but it remains true that if Alabama distributed the wealth the way other states did — that is, if Alabama taxed the poor less and the rich more — the gap would be narrower.

And if it were narrower, if the poor were allowed to keep more of their meager earnings and the rich would contribute more of theirs, what a better state Alabama would be.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives in a party-line vote Wednesday narrowly approved $39 billion in budget savings over five years that will rein in federal spending by increasing costs for many Americans, including college students, the elderly and the working poor.

The legislation, approved by the Senate in December, now goes to President Bush, who issued a statement saying he’ll sign it.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Anniston) voted in favor of the measure.

The 216-214 vote was a key victory for Republican leaders, who worked fiercely to prevent moderates from defecting on the vote. In the end, 13 Republicans opposed the measure and no Democrat voted for it. A loss would have embarrassed the Republican leadership, coming on the first work day of this House session.

Republicans portrayed the spending cuts as necessary to make up for costs related to Hurricane Katrina and to hold the line on growing federal budget deficits.

“For Americans troubled by a rising tide of red ink here in Washington, D.C., 2006 begins with reason for optimism as this Congress demonstrates the ability to make tough choices in tough times to put our fiscal house in order,” said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, a leading Republican fiscal hawk.

The spending reductions, however, could be overshadowed by up to $70 billion in tax cuts over five years, which Congress hopes to pass in the next month. That would deepen deficits.

Democrats argued that the spending cuts will hurt the most vulnerable Americans and said the savings pale in comparison to tax reductions that Republicans have enacted over the past year.

“Anybody coming here to the well of the House or going to the voting machine to register his or her vote thinking that this is going to reduce the deficit has another thought coming. The process is a sham,” said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

The largest spending cut would be a nearly $12 billion slice in federal student loans. The cut also would increase interest rates on the loans.

The legislation will reduce Medicaid spending by $4.7 billion over five years while requiring higher co-payments for health services for most Medicaid recipients. Current law prohibits health-care providers from denying care even if patients can’t afford nominal cost-sharing payments. Under this legislation, providers could deny service for lack of payment.

The measure also would increase penalties for seniors who shift their financial assets so they can qualify for nursing-home care under Medicaid. Current law doesn’t count the value of a senior’s house in determining eligibility for Medicaid, but the bill would make any senior with more than $500,000 in home equity ineligible for nursing-home benefits.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects that by 2010 the legislation would increase costs of prescription drugs for 13 million Americans, half of them people with incomes below the poverty level.

In one provision that broadens health care coverage, families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level who have disabled children would be able to use Medicaid to cover the children’s health-care costs. The provision would take effect on Jan. 1, 2007, and would be phased in over three years.

The legislation also reduces overall spending on Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly, by $6.4 billion over five years.

It also would generate $7.4 billion in new revenue by authorizing the auction of licenses for use of the electromagnetic spectrum for radio, television, mobile phone and other wireless services.

Democrats accused Republicans of bowing to health-care lobbyists.

“This is a product of special-interests lobbying, and the stench of special interests hangs over the chamber as we consider it today,” said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.