Speaker John Boehner. Photo credit: TalkMediaNews, http://www.flickr.com/photos/talkradionews/5964496400/
It’s a Christmas miracle – the payroll tax extension fight that hastened the US Congress’s descent to the lowest approval rating of all time may finally be over.
House Republicans, caving to pressure from not only President Barack Obama, Senate and House Democrats, and the American people, but from within their own party as well, agreed to a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut Thursday night. The tax cut, which expires on January 1 and would have seen payroll taxes rise from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent, was the subject of contentious debate: Though both parties wanted to extend it, they couldn’t – and still can’t – agree on how to pay for it. The Senate passed a stopgap two-month extension last week, effectively putting off the decision until February, only to see House Republicans rally together to vote the extension down, demanding that Congress instead tackle negotiating a one-year extension instead.
Bad move, prominent Republican strategists and observers, including Karl Rove and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, agreed. Not only did the House Republicans come off as obstructionist and beholden to the increasingly unpopular conservative tea party types on the backbench, but they also handed President Barack Obama enough ammunition to sink them in the run-up to the 2012 election. Moreover, the American people, already disgusted with a Congress that brought America to the brink of government shutdown three times in one year in its partisan squabbles, are angry: Only 11 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Only 11 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a recent Gallup poll.
The new deal was hashed out by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and could be approved Friday, The New York Times reported. According to the paper, the plan would see a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and long-term jobless benefits, as well as the creation of a House-Senate conference committee to negotiate the extension of those benefits through 2012. It’s pretty much a copy of the bill that the House rejected on Tuesday.
Boehner concedes defeat
Obama gets boost from Republicans. Obama may be suffering from America’s overwhelming economic woes, but the Republican Party may have shown, with this round at least, that its is “incapable of capitalizing on its advantages,” the Associated Press claimed in a piece of news analysis. “Congressional Republicans’ fumbling of the payroll tax extension issue is the latest example of party in-fighting and disarray that gives Democrats hope for the 2012 elections. GOP presidential contenders tried to distance themselves from the legislative mess. But they might be tarred nonetheless if swing voters decide the party is either inept at governing or too extreme.”
Congress is “fundamentally broken”. The New York Post, in a leading editorial, echoed what appear to be the sentiments of the American people: Sure, it’s great that Congress is on track to approve the payroll tax cut, but this partisan power struggle just showed that it is “fundamentally broken and painfully out of touch”. The paper laid much of the blame on the House Republicans, who though they were trying to prove a point but in the end, just proved how willing they were to “toy” with an “economy that remains in serious danger of entering a new slowdown”. Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell were right to demand an end to the partisan grudge match. Now, said the Post, “Left on the to-do list for members of Congress: Make the tax cut deal, then go home. America is sick of you.”
New York Post: Go home, Congress – “America is sick of you.”
House GOP humbled, Boehner laid down the law. Though the commentariat this week wondered whether Speaker Boehner had lost control of his tea party-seeded caucus, Boehner responded on Thursday by laying down the law, Carrie Budoff Brown and Jonathan Allen at Politico wrote. “At no small personal political risk, Boehner laid down the law to his unruly caucus, substituting his own judgment for their collective wisdom in cutting a very slightly altered deal with [Obama, Reid and McConnell]… The tweak is such a small political fig leaf that even Eve might blush at the lack of cover. But it got congressional Republicans what they desperately needed: A way out of a political vice that threatened to damage their party’s brand more with each passing day.”
More on Congress
- Shutdown averted, but Congress still squabbling over payroll tax extension
- Shutdown nears in payroll tax fight
- Is Congress just broken?
- Deadlock in ceiling debate persists
