WASHINGTON — Under fire from senators in their own party, House Republicans prepared to vote on Tuesday against a Senate measure to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for millions of Americans for two months, demanding that the Senate reopen negotiations over the benefits.þþþDemocrats, however, imagining the political wind at their backs, have said they would not return to the Capitol to negotiate further until the House passed the short-term bill, one that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, negotiated and voted for, along with 38 other Republican senators on Saturday.þþThe House had been planning to vote on the two-month payroll tax bill on Monday night. But after a two-hour meeting of their caucus, House Republican leaders postponed the floor debate and the vote to Tuesday.þþ“The votes will take place tomorrow in the light of day,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 House Republican.þþ However, rather than have a straight up-or-down vote, the House will implement a procedural maneuver in which they will “reject” the Senate bill while requesting to go to conference with members of that chamber in a single measure, protecting House members from having to actually vote against extending a payroll tax cut. During the conference meeting among Republican members, some members expressed concern about effectively voting for a tax increase on the eve of an election year, said some who attended. þþAs the House readied itself for what was certain to be a raucous floor fight over both the bill and the method that will now be used to bring it to the floor, it was increasingly unclear Tuesday whether the tax cuts would be extended for 160 million workers and whether millions of unemployed Americans would continue to get jobless benefits next year.þþSpeaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said he was confident that he had the votes to reject the Senate version of the bill.þþThe standoff leaves Mr. Boehner ending the year exactly where he began, in the middle of a nasty fiscal fight with Senate Democrats and his conservative freshmen in revolt, making it difficult to find a middle ground between mollifying his conference and coming up with legislation to avert disaster. But Mr. Boehner said repeatedly on Monday that he believed a deal for a one-year extension could still be struck, even with the Senate essentially adjourned for the year and the tax break set to expire on Jan. 1.þþ“I don’t believe the differences are that significant that we can’t do this for a whole year,” Mr. Boehner said. “Why punt this until the end of February when we can just do this now and get it over with?”þþSenator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, urged Mr. Boehner to allow an up-or-down vote. “With millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet, it would be unconscionable for Speaker Boehner to block a bipartisan agreement that would protect middle-class families from the thousand-dollar tax increase looming on January first,” Mr. Reid said in a statement.þþA core group of conservative House members, many of them newcomers who provided the Republican majority, have balked all year at short-term spending agreements, including proposed legislation to raise the debt ceiling and bills to increase disaster funding. þþ“We are witnessing the concluding convulsion of confrontation and obstruction in the most unproductive, Tea Party-dominated partisan session of the Congress — the most partisan of which I have participated,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said during a news briefing on Monday. He has served in Congress for three decades.þþThe impasse began over the weekend when House Republicans said they would reject the Senate measure, which passed 89 to 10. It would, for two months, extend the payroll tax cut, continue unemployment benefits and prevent a cut in fees paid to doctors who accept Medicare, and would allow lawmakers and the White House time to work out their differences on how to pay for a yearlong extension.þþMany rank-and-file Republicans have questioned continuing the payroll tax break, because it would reduce the flow of revenue to the Social Security trust fund, which would be replaced by payments from the Treasury. But House Republican leaders said on Monday that their objection was not to the tax cut itself, but to the temporary nature of the fix.þþ“We don’t need to be governing in two-month increments,” Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader, said on CNN. Mr. Boehner, who said on Monday that he never assured the Senate that such a package would pass his chamber, did insist on and win a sweetener provision, one that would speed the review process for construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.þþOn Monday, with House Republicans moving ahead with their plans to block the bill, some of their counterparts in the Senate issued strong rebukes.þþ“The House Republicans’ plan to scuttle the deal to help middle-class families is irresponsible and wrong,” said Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts. He was echoed by other Republican senators, including Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Dean Heller of Nevada; all three of them face re-election in 2012.þþBut Republican freshmen in the House, several of whom held a news conference on Monday to describe their position, said they were not particularly moved by the Republican senators or pressure from Democrats.þþThe Senate’s decision to go with a two-month bill showed “a failure of leadership in the entire Senate — it’s Democrat and Republican,” said Representative Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York. “If that’s what the Senate believes is leadership, then I believe the Senate is a complete failure.”þþDemocrats, on defense most of the year against the will of the House, found themselves in an unusual position on Monday, content to sit back as Republicans fought among themselves. Senate Democrats did send out videos on Twitter of Mr. McConnell giving a high five to a colleague after the bill’s passage, meant to be the final act of the first session of the 112th Congress.þþAs lawmakers fought, payroll specialists told Congress on Monday that the two-month change in Social Security payroll tax rates envisioned in the Senate bill was not workable.þþIn a letter to Congressional leaders, Pete A. Isberg, president of the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, a trade group, said there was not enough notice to accommodate the proposal.þþMany payroll administrators will have difficulty adjusting computer systems before January or even February, Mr. Isberg said. “Taxpayers who are paid more than $18,350 in the first two months of the year could be confused or upset by application of the higher tax rate,” he said. If employers do not change their payroll systems in time, he said, they may try to “collect additional taxes late in the year” for those months.
Source: NY Times
