State Rep. Mike Connolly. Photo courtesy of State House News Service / Sam Doran.

House members from both parties on Monday folded their cards on revenue amendments, deferring to House leaders and their call to debate revenues later this year and not as part of the annual budget debate. A proposal to create a capital gains tax in Massachusetts was one of the proposals withdrawn by its sponsor, a prominent liberal legislator from Cambridge.

With little or no debate on revenue amendments, representatives largely opted against forcing debates and votes on revenue amendments, with that category of amendments dispensed with by about 12:45 p.m., when the House gave the budget bill (H 3800) a vote of initial approval.

At the outset of the debate, Revenue Committee Chairman Mark Cusack asked colleagues to give up their revenue-related amendments and instead pursue those goals through his committee following public hearings.

“We will have a full, robust and thoughtful revenue debate in the coming months,” Cusack said as he suggested that this week is not the right time for representatives to push their revenue ideas. “We are serious about looking at revenue this session, but doing so in a responsible way.”

House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz and Cusack have previously said they intend to discuss proposals to raise new revenue later this session and not as part of the budget consideration.

Rep. Mike Connolly withdrew his amendment to raise the rate at which capital gains are taxed, Rep. Marc Lombardo withdrew his proposals to lower the sales and income tax rates to 5 percent, Rep. David DeCoste withdrew proposed changes to the Community Preservation Act funding source and Rep. Angelo Scaccia withdrew his amendments altering the film tax credit after debating the credit’s merits with Majority Leader Ron Mariano, a film tax credit supporter.

While Connolly suggested the proposal would have failed on the House floor, progressive activists criticized Connolly’s amendment withdrawal as “cav[ing] to leadership.”

“This just reinforces a State House culture where debate is silenced, no one takes a stand and nothing gets done,” Erika Uyterhoeven, co-founder of Act On Mass, said in a statement. “The only way our representatives get away with being so out of step with their voters is by doing business behind closed doors with no record of who is responsible. If Rep. Connolly, who has been a progressive leader, won’t stand up and demand a public debate on crucial issues, who will?”

Connolly last week used social media to tout news coverage of his amendment. “As a representative of #Somerville and #CambMa, I am confronted with the need for new revenue on a daily basis – particularly with regard to the MBTA and housing programs. Here’s a big proposal to do something about it,” he wrote.

In his statement to the News Service, Connolly said “there’s a lot more work we can do in terms of organizing and outreach, and we know we will have several opportunities to put this new proposal to a vote this session. The speaker has promised that we will debate a revenue bill this year, and in that context, it makes sense for us to treat this past week as an auspicious start of a new push for raising significant new revenue in the legislature.”