It sounds like the Democrats are ready to meet the Republicans halfway on extending the payroll tax cut — but the question now is whether the GOP will demand the Dems meet them 100 percent of their way as talk looms of a government shutdown:
In what would be a major concession, President Obama and Senate Democrats will drop their insistence that a surtax on millionaires pay for extending the payroll tax cut, a Democratic source tells CNN. This would be part of a new Democratic offer.
The move comes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other top Senate Democrats met with President Obama at the White House earlier today.
Meanwhile, talk of a possible government shut down persists:
The Obama administration is alerting employees to the possibility of a partial government shutdown if talks on bills to fund the government and extend the payroll tax cut collapse later this week.
With Congress facing a midnight Friday deadline to either pass a short-term or final measure to fund government operations for the remainder of the fiscal year, Cabinet secretaries and agency heads planned to send an e-mail message to workers by close of business Wednesday informing them that a shutdown could occur, according to multiple administration officials familiar with the plans.
A shutdown would not apply to a wide swath of agencies and departments that already have full-year funding in place thanks to a partial spending bill that passed in November, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, House and Urban Development, Justice, State, and Transportation, NASA, and other smaller agencies covered by separate appropriations measures.
In a statement, Office of Management and Budget spokesman Kenneth Baer said Wednesday that “There is no reason for the government to shut down.”Congress could act quickly to pass a short- or long-term spending measure, Baer said, as they have seven times already this year.
A government shut down would further discredit the political class — if it possible for the political class to be more discredited than it already is, except among cheerleading partisans.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.