Update: Quoting Boehnner at his 5:30pm presser, “It may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world to wage this ultimately futile war.” Understatement.
Update: Looks like not all Republicans are on board with Boehnner’s plan to pass this quietly via unanimous consent.
Great….the optics couldn’t have been better. President gives a presser surrounded by an adoring crowd of middle-class taxpayers demanding action, then within the hour, the Republicans cave making it look even weaker than it is. Is anybody still talking about Keystone anymore? Oh, and just a thought…what if Boehnner doesn’t have the votes to pass this? Is he done as Speaker? But is Boehnner really the one we should be blaming? It looks to me like Boehnner went out on a limb over this, and Mitch McConnell just cut him off.
(ABCNews)… House Republican leaders have decided to accept a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut, sources told ABC News this afternoon, preventing a hike in taxes just nine days before the tax break expires for 160 million Americans.
House GOP leaders appeared to be adopting a compromise suggested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass the two-month extension in exchange for the Senate appointing members to a conference committee, which will negotiate a longer-term solution. The proposal won a nod of approval from President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The deal entails a new bill with language protecting small businesses from a measure in the Senate bill that creates temporary new caps on the wages that are subject to payroll tax relief, a Republican aide said. Reid accepted the House Republicans’ proposal late this afternoon. The new bill would require both Senate and House approval. House Republican leaders are expected to present this proposal to their members in a 5 p.m. conference call. The bill could potentially be passed by unanimous consent, which would not require all the members to return for a vote.
Earlier this afternoon, Obama assailed House Republicans for a “ridiculous Washington standoff” and stepped up pressure on them to pass a two-month extension bill that sailed through the Senate by a bipartisan vote. “This isn’t a typical Democrat versus Republican issue. This is an issue where an overwhelming number of people in both parties agree,” the president said today. “How can we not get that done? Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when people agree to things, we can’t do it? It doesn’t make any sense.” The president, who delayed his vacation to Hawaii with his family because of the stalemate, was surrounded by individuals who wrote to the White House detailing how the end of the payroll tax break would affect their lives.
The White House is pursuing an aggressive campaign on social media to highlight the loss in benefits that millions of Americans will incur on Jan. 1 if Congress doesn’t act. Americans, on average, would lose about $40 per paycheck if the tax cuts expire. On Wednesday, Obama himself personally took to Twitter asking Americans to share what that loss would mean to them. “Forty dollars can make all the difference in the world,” Obama said today, as he read out stories from Americans who had responded to his request. “Enough is enough. The people standing with me today cannot afford any more games.” Obama said more than 30,000 people have responded to the White House’s “What 40 Dollars a Paycheck Means to American Families” campaign on Twitter, Facebook and whitehouse.gov.
House Republicans faced increasing pressure, even from their Senate counterparts, to find a compromise quickly. Outwardly, the House GOP leadership showed no outward sign of caving in, reiterating defiantly that they would not support the Senate bill. “The fact is, we can do better,” Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a news conference today. “It’s time for us to sit down and have a serious negotiation and solve this problem.” But internally, even rank and file House Republicans were beginning to break away from Boehner and the GOP leadership’s insistence that Congress approve a year-long deal to extend the payroll tax cut, instead urging the speaker to consider a short-term deal.
Rep. Sean Duffy, a freshman Republican from Wisconsin, today called on his leadership “to immediately bring up the Senate’s two-month extension for an up or down vote. Middle class families deserve a Congress that will rise above the squabbling and ensure their taxes don’t go up right after Christmas,” Duffy wrote in a statement. “This is about preventing hardworking Wisconsin families from paying an extra $40 a week for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C.”
Another House Republican freshman, Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, wrote a letter to the speaker that asked for all options to be on the table as time runs short. “We are now in a position that requires all options to be on the table, that requires Republicans to not only demand a willingness to compromise, but to offer it as well,” Crawford wrote in a letter to Boehner. (Read more…)