Republicans And Democrats Play The "Blame Game"

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(STATEHOUSE) - At the half way point of the legislative session, Republicans and Democrats are playing the blame game over the death of a measure to tack on a new cigarette tax.

House Speaker Pat Bauer said many of the democratic no votes were prepared to vote yes, as long as there were republican votes to match them. He says the party won't stick its neck out alone and be blasted in the next campaign for voting to raise taxes.

Majority democrats split down the middle 25-25, with republicans voting 27-19. Bosma accused democratic representative Charlie Brown of not being able to "dictate numbers," when it came to the vote count. Bosma also accused the democrats of making empty promises.

Democrats said Wednesday morning that they still believed that the proposed extra tax could be revived.

Bosma even compared the cigarette tax accusations to a conversation he had recently with his daughter about a bad grade she got. Bosma says, "the democrats are responsible for leading this general assembly and when we give 19 votes for something, a bipartisan showing that they never showed us on contentious issues and then point to us as the cause of failure, I find that almost as remarkable as my daughter's opinion."

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