With the Senate adjourned for the holidays, House Republicans are moving to shelve a bipartisan two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut that cleared the Senate over the weekend and are demanding instead that their fellow lawmakers return to the Capitol for negotiations.
After a spate of bipartisanship last week, the combatants are back in full-throated warfare over President Barack Obama’s payroll tax initiative and other expiring measures, including jobless benefits for almost 1.8 million people who will lose them next month if Congress doesn’t act.
Instead of accepting a two-month stopgap Senate measure that would ensure fighting continues into February, Republicans said they would move Tuesday to set up an official House-Senate negotiating panel known as a conference committee. The Senate’s top Democrat said he would refuse to negotiate until the House passes the short-term version.
Both sides insist they want to extend the provisions before a Dec. 31 deadline, but that will prove difficult. After overwhelmingly passing a two-month extension Saturday, senators raced for the exits in the belief that the House would see no alternative but to go along. The Senate isn’t scheduled to resume legislative work until Jan. 23.
The Senate’s short-term, lowest-common-denominator approach would renew a 2 percentage point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, plus jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, and would prevent a huge cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
Read More at OfficialWire By Andrew Taylor, OfficialWire
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i didnt even have to read the contentn of this to know you guys are idiots, dear gawd.
"senators raced for the exits in the belief that the House would see no alternative but to go along"
Perhaps, but since they had wide bipartisan agreement (89-10, an almost-unheard-of margin nowadays) on the deal Boehner supposedly wanted, they had no reason to think the House wouldn't go along. How long before Caesar Boehner is replaced by Brutus Cantor, I wonder?
Ya gotta love the GOP, continually finding new ways to shoot themselves in the foot.
""House Republicans could care less about bipartisanship. It's their way or nothing. They are focused entirely on beating Obama in 2012, even if they cause a recession in the process."- deserved repeating!!! Click to view my profile dwntwnboy"
They've already caused a recession which, thanks to President Obama's efforts, we're climbing out of. What the republicans want to do is stop that fine progress and plunge the nation back into the depths of, not a recession but a full blown depression.