House Republicans stick by one-year bill; Obama to speak
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A year-end brawl over extending a payroll-tax cut dragged on Thursday, as House Republicans insisted on a one-year break and President Barack Obama was preparing to push his position anew.
Obama is meeting Thursday with workers who will see a $40-a-paycheck increase in taxes if Congress doesn’t act to extend the 2% cut, and will speak about the consequences Thursday afternoon.
House Republicans, meanwhile, dug in on Thursday morning and said again that they reject a two-month extension of the current 4.2% rate. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and other leaders urged Obama and Democrats to appoint members to a conference committee and hammer out a one-year deal.
“We need somebody to work with,” Boehner said at a brief Capitol Hill news conference. “We’re not going to negotiate with ourselves.”
Without action before the end of the year, payroll taxes will revert to a 6.2% rate on Jan. 1.
Nearly 2 million people will also lose unemployment benefits unless Congress extends them on Dec. 31 or before.
Pressure is mounting on House Republicans to accept the Senate-passed deal with just nine days remaining until a tax hike kicks in.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said “Republicans are losing this fight” in an interview Thursday morning on CNN. Democrats have also touted a Wall Street Journal editorial blasting Republicans’ handling of the tax fight.
Obama has said he also favors a one-year extension of the lowered payroll-tax rate. But he has urged Republicans to accept the two-month bill so parties can negotiate a longer-term deal.
Both the Senate’s bill and a House-passed bill would also require Obama to decide within two months whether to approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline between the U.S. and Canada. Obama had sought to delay that decision until 2013.
Robert Schroeder is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.
