Last week, Rep. Tom Allen, a Democrat, proposed helping first time home buyers with a tax credit ($3,000 for single filers; $6,000 for joint filers). Washington, D.C., residents have had a similar credit of $5,000 for about the past 10 years, and, for purposes of full disclosure, I took advantage of it in 1998 to help buy my first condo (this was well before the run up in the real estate market).

Allen held a press conference to tout his new idea and to show who would benefit he brings along a young couple, Mike Cuzzi and Heather Quinn. The only thing is that Cuzzi worked for Allen and he worked for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign through the New Hampshire primary. Quinn worked for Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine.

The day of the press conference, Kevin Kelly, Sen. Susan Collins' press secretary, pointed this out to me. I asked Mark Sullivan, Allen's press secretary, about the connection between Cuzzi and Allen, and Sullivan said it was true.

"We know them and they fit the profile," Sullivan said in a phone interview on Friday. "We were upfront about who they are and introduced them as former employees. This has nothing to do with their status of their employment."

To be sure, there are other young couples with families in Maine who could benefit from Allen's proposal and it is unclear why they could not find a couple without any ties to his congressional office or his campaign.

Finally, I talked with Allen about his proposal and it looks like it's not going anywhere. There's a tax bill to help homeowners moving through the Ways and Means Committee. The panel's chairman, Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., has proposed something similar to Allen's bill, but his credit would have to be paid back over a 15-year period.

In these situations, lawmakers generally accede to the chairman's will.

E-mail this entry to a friend