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Social Security tax deal overwhelmingly passed by Senate is opposed by House GOP. House Speaker Boehner says two-month extension of Social Security payroll tax cut is too short.?

The fate of the two-month?Social?Security?tax break extension suddenly became uncertain Sunday as House Speaker John Boehner said he and most Republicans were opposed to the plan.

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“It’s pretty clear that I and our members oppose the Senate bill,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Republicans, he said, want a longer-term fix.

Boehner was reflecting the view of many House Republicans, who complained about the deal in a conference call hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the measure on Saturday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reacted angrily. “Instead of threatening middle-class families with a thousand-dollar tax hike, Speaker Boehner should bring up the bipartisan compromise that (Republican Senate Leader Mitch) McConnell and I negotiated, and which passed the Senate with an overwhelming majority of Democratic and Republican votes,” Reid said.

“I would hate to think that Speaker Boehner is refusing to act on this bipartisan compromise because he is afraid it will actually pass, but I cannot imagine any other reason why he would not bring it up for a vote.”

“It’s time House Republicans stop playing politics and get the job done for the American people,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said: “This is the latest example of the tea-party Republicans sacrificing the good of the country on the altar of extreme ideology.”

The $33 billion package approved Saturday would extend the current?Social?Security?tax rate paid by employees through the end of February. The 2011 rate is 4.2 percent; it would revert to 6.2 percent if there is no extension.

The bill also would extend long-term unemployment benefits and continue current Medicare payment rates to physicians. Without any action, payments would be cut 27.4 percent next year.

It was thought that Republicans would support the temporary extension, particularly since they included a GOP provision to speed up consideration of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Obama administration had sought to delay a decision on the pipeline, which environmental groups oppose, until 2013. The Senate voted 89 to 10 for the bill.

But Boehner, as well as other Republicans, made it clear that they didn’t like a two-month fix.

“How can you do tax policy for two months?” he asked.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/DtZlvBPDsYk/Social-Security-tax-break-in-jeopardy.-Again

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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Top House Republicans rebelled Sunday against a bipartisan, Senate-approved bill extending payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits for two months, reigniting a politically fueled holiday-season clash that had seemed all but doused.

?????The House GOP defiance cast uncertainty over how quickly Congress would forestall a tax increase otherwise heading straight at 160 million workers beginning New Year’s Day. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it could be finished within two weeks, which suggested that lawmakers might have to spend much of their usual holiday break battling each other in the Capitol.

?????A day after rank-and-file House GOP lawmakers used a conference call to spew venom against the Senate-passed bill, Boehner said he opposed the legislation and wanted congressional bargainers to craft a new, year-long version.

?????”The president said we shouldn’t be going anywhere without getting our work done,” Boehner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to President Barack Obama’s oft-repeated promise to postpone his Christmastime trip to Hawaii if the legislation was not finished. “Let’s get our work done, let’s do this for a year.”

?????A spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the House would vote Monday to either request formal bargaining with the Senate or to make the legislation “responsible and in line with the needs of hard-working taxpayers and middle-class families.”

?????Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon did not specify what those changes might be, beyond a longer-lasting bill. Boehner, though, expressed support for “reasonable reductions in spending” in a House-approved payroll tax bill and for provisions that blocked some Obama administration anti-pollution rules.

?????Democrats leaped at what they saw as a chance to champion lower- and middle-income Americans by accusing Republicans of threatening a wide tax increase unless their demands are met. If Congress doesn’t act, workers would see their take-home checks cut by 2 percentage points beginning Jan. 1, when this year’s 4.2 percent payroll tax reverts to its normal 6.2 percent.

“They should pass the two month extension now to avoid a devastating tax hike from hitting the middle class in just 13 days,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “It’s time House Republicans stop playing politics and get the job done for the American people.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said by opposing the Senate bill, “Tea party House Republicans are walking away once again, showing their extremism and clearly demonstrating that they never intended to give the middle class a tax cut,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

?????Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the Nevada Democrat would be “happy to continue negotiating a yearlong extension as soon as the House passes the Senate’s short-term, bipartisan compromise to make sure middle-class families will not be hit by a thousand-dollar tax hike on January 1.”

?????Keeping this year’s 2 percentage point payroll tax cut in effect through 2012 would produce $1,000 in savings for a family earning $50,000 a year. The two-month version would be worth about $170 for the same household.

?????On Saturday, the Senate voted 89-10 for its legislation, which was negotiated by Senate Republican and Democratic leaders and backed by solid majorities of senators from both parties. It would provide a two-month extension of the payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits and prevent scheduled 27 percent cuts to doctors’ Medicare reimbursements during that period, reductions that could convince physicians to stop treating elderly patients covered by the program.

?????That measure was praised by Obama, and even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed optimism that the measure would become law. Initial bills produced by both sides lasted for a year, but negotiators working on the final product could not agree to savings that would finance such a measure, likely to cost roughly $200 billion.

?????Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the No. 3 Senate leader, said Boehner had asked McConnell and Reid to negotiate a compromise, seemingly suggesting that Boehner had walked away from a deal. Republicans said that is untrue and said the House GOP played no role in last week’s bargaining between the Senate leaders.

Boehner won support Sunday from McConnell. His spokesman, Donald Stewart, said the best way to craft a new bill “and provide certainty for job creators, employees and the long-term unemployed is through regular order” ? a term used to describe the normal process of negotiations between the House and Senate.

?????The Senate bill included language cherished by Republicans giving Obama 60 days to approve an oil pipeline stretching from western Canada’s tar sands to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, unless he declared the project hurt the national interest. GOP leaders had thought that provision would assure enough votes to pass the overall legislation.

?????Obama had previously said he was delaying a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013, allowing him to wait until after next November’s elections to choose between unions favoring the project’s thousands of jobs and environmentalists opposed to its potential pollution and massive energy use. Obama initially threatened to kill the payroll tax bill if it included the pipeline language but eventually retreated.

?????Despite the Keystone provision, House Republicans used a Saturday conference call to express anger about the Senate bill and frustration that their leaders seemed willing to agree to the compromise, participants said. Many demanded a return to some of the House bill’s spending cuts, including reductions in Obama’s health care overhaul law of last year, and several expressed a willingness to work through the holidays to revamp the legislation, Republicans said.

?????Though GOP leaders support extending the payroll tax and jobless benefits, some House Republicans question doing that, arguing it won’t produce jobs and could weaken Social Security. The payroll tax, subtracted from workers’ paychecks, is used to finance Social Security.

The Senate adjourned Saturday and is not scheduled to conduct legislative work until late January. That could potentially complicate quick work on a revised payroll tax bill because all 100 senators would have to agree to let the Senate hold any votes before then.

?????

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-12-18-US-Congress-Rdp/id-e127756853ba4321b5b969d08982f367

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WASHINGTON?? The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to temporarily set aside its partisan standoff over President Barack Obama’s jobs plan and move toward giving a modest economic spark to two potent interest groups: veterans and businesses.

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In a 94-1 roll call, senators voted to start debating a measure repealing a requirement that federal, state and many local governments withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors.

That bill has been lobbied by a wide swath of industry groups large and small and has no significant opposition.

By the time the Senate approves the legislation ? perhaps later this week ? Democrats planned to add language backed by both parties offering tax breaks to companies that hire veterans and providing vets with employment counseling and other job-hunting services.

Monday’s one-sided vote signaled that barring an unexpected twist, the Senate was likely to send the overall measure to the House, which returns from a recess next week.

The tax credits, up to $9,600 for companies hiring disabled veterans who have been jobless at least six months, would represent the first ? though tiny ? piece of Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal to be approved by Congress, assuming Senate and then House passage.

14 million jobless
The expected cooperation contrasted with the two parties’ battling at a time when persistent 9 percent unemployment is keeping 14 million Americans out of work and looming as the dominant issue in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

It also masked the divisions between Democrats and Republicans over the keystones of Obama’s jobs plan ? spending huge sums to repair roads, hire teachers and give workers and companies breaks on the payroll tax.

Not coincidentally, the measure was beginning to move toward approval just ahead of Friday’s Veterans Day celebrations, when lawmakers stream home for speeches and parades.

And even as the two sides seemed ready to cooperate, they exchanged partisan slings over lawmakers’ refusal so far to approve the rest of the president’s jobs proposal.

“There’s no good reason to oppose this bill, not one,” Obama said in the White House Rose Garden as he promoted his proposed aid for veterans. “Our veterans did their jobs. It’s time for Congress to do theirs.”

On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cited Republican opposition that has sunk the jobs legislation so far this year and taunted, “Now we will see whether Senate Republicans are willing to put jobs for veterans at risk as well. I certainly hope they are not.”

Firing back, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., complained that the Republican-run House has approved nearly two dozen jobs measures that the Democratic-led Senate has ignored. The reason, he said: “So the president can go around on a bus and blame Congress for the country’s problems.”

McConnell added, “It’s only a matter of time before the American people catch on to the Democrats’ refusal to act.”

Job training, education
The White House says veterans who have served since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have a 12 percent unemployment rate, three points above the overall national average.

To address that, the Democratic amendment will include Obama’s proposal to create a new tax credit of $2,400 for companies hiring veterans who have been jobless at least four weeks, and $5,600 for vets out of work at least six months.

In addition, he proposed doubling the existing tax credit that employers get for hiring a disabled veteran unemployed at least half a year from $4,800 to $9,600.

According to a White House estimate last September, these credits would cost $90 million ? a minute sliver of Obama’s overall plans for fighting joblessness.

In addition, the Democratic amendment will include compromise jobs programs worked out between the chairs of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs committees, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla.

These include money for veterans’ job training and education at community colleges and trade schools, job counseling for troops before they leave the military, and expanded benefits to disabled veterans.

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Senate aides said the job training proposal was expected to cost around $1 billion. To pay for the veterans’ tax credits and training, the measure would extend a fee the Department of Veterans Affairs charges for guaranteeing home loans, the aides said.

The veterans language is supported by groups including Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

By 405-16, the House approved a bill two weeks ago repealing the withholding requirement for government contractors.

It would cost $11.2 billion in lost revenue over 10 years, which the measure would recoup by making it harder for some Social Security recipients to qualify for Medicaid under Obama’s health care overhaul law.

Repeal supporters say the measure would leave companies with more money to expand. Many economists say any impact would be minor, noting that the withholding doesn’t take effect until 2013.

Days before that House vote, the Senate voted narrowly against debating a GOP version of the government contractors’ measure after Republicans proposed paying for it by cutting unspecified spending by federal agencies, drawing strong Democratic opposition.

The withholding requirement became law five years ago, enacted by President George W. Bush and a GOP-run Congress in response to investigations showing that thousands of contractors were behind on billions of dollars in taxes.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., was the only “no” vote. An aide said he favors the jobs initiatives but opposes using health care cuts to pay for them.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45203379/ns/politics-capitol_hill/

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