And so the game of political brinksmanship continues. The House has passed a version of the payroll tax plan that sticks it to President Barack Obama, thus ensuring the continuation of the seemingly nonstop partisan struggle:
Another Washington political showdown took shape Tuesday as the House of Representatives passed a Republican plan that would extend the payroll tax cut and speed the process for government approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
The bill, approved on a 234-193 vote largely on party lines, now goes to the Senate, where it was unlikely to pass due to strong opposition from Democratic leaders.
In addition, a White House policy statement said President Barack Obama would veto the plan if it reached his desk, setting up further brinksmanship in coming days with Congress scheduled to leave Washington for its holiday recess at the end of the week.
The impasse involves a convergence of major issues, including the payroll tax-cut extension and a spending bill that must pass in order to keep the government funded after Friday.
Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, agreed that Congress must not go home for the holidays without extending the payroll tax cut that saves working Americans an average of $1,000 a year, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
Without spelling out a specific order of necessary steps, Carney made clear that Obama wants Congress to approve both a payroll tax plan and the broad government spending bill.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky characterized the Democratic stance as a threat to delay action on the spending plan until a compromise is reached on the payroll tax cut measure. That could cause a government shutdown after Friday, McConnell warned.
Carney, however, insisted that Congress has plenty of time to act on all of the outstanding measures, and called for a payroll tax extension free of the pipeline provision.
It’s no longer solving problems. It’s perpetuating problems.
The Republican-led House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat on Tuesday and passed a bill to expedite approval of the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas pipeline project.
The provision was part of a broader bill to extend a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans. Democrats oppose Republicans’ efforts to link the two issues and the measure is expected to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
McClatchy puts it into the larger context:
President Barack Obama and a bitterly divided Congress have 18 days to figure out whether to continue a Social Security payroll tax cut, avoid a huge drop in Medicare payments to doctors and maintain many unemployment benefits.
But Tuesday no one knew where the two warring political parties could find common ground.
“I don’t know how this will come out. I honestly don’t. It’s like a book that is almost written, but we don’t know how the final chapter comes out,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a key moderate.
The House of Representatives landed the latest partisan blow on Tuesday, voting 234-193 for a Republican package that most Democrats abhor.
The Obama administration said it “strongly opposed” the bill.
“This debate should not be about scoring political points. This debate should be about cutting taxes for the middle class,” an administration statement said.
Three major programs face changes Jan. 1 unless lawmakers reach agreement.
Republicans argued during Tuesday’s floor debate that the pipeline project would lead to the “immediate” creation of tens of thousands of jobs. Democrats have argued that that claim is inflated, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said earlier Tuesday that the Keystone pipeline provision “does have Democratic support, but not in this bill.”
“This is a partisan bill sticking the finger in the eye of those who disagree with the non-germane policies that are included, included simply for the purposes of energizing a small political base in their party,” Hoyer said at his weekly pen-and-pad briefing. “As I’ve said, the Republican Party now represents, in my view, the narrowest base of any party in the 45 years that I’ve been active in politics.”
The White House said in its veto threat that the GOP measure was a political move that “breaks the bipartisan agreement on spending cuts that was reached just a few months ago.”
Reid told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Senate Democrats discussed “a number of alternatives” to a surtax on millionaires, Democrats’ preferred method of paying for the payroll tax cut extension. He added that Democrats still back some way of requiring “shared sacrifice” from the wealthy.
“One of the things we certainly believe, as does almost 80 percent of the American people, (is) that there should be a contribution, ever be it so slight, by the wealthiest of the wealthy,” Reid said.
The payroll tax debate comes as Congress faces an even higher-stakes argument over keeping the government funded through late next year. The measure currently keeping the government running expires on Friday, and leaders of both parties have begun accusing each other of using the funding bill as a bargaining chip in the negotiations over the payroll tax.
As you read this, here is some music that is perhaps fitting to what’s unfolding in DC:
Photo via shutterstock.com
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.