Republicans drop demand to pay for payroll tax cut (GOP gives up and lets Obama play his games)

reuters ^ | 2/13/2012 | Donna Smith and Thomas Ferraro

[tobyhill]

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives on Monday dropped their demand for spending reductions to pay for extending a tax cut for 160 million American workers, setting up a likely breakthrough for agreement with Democrats.

The about-face cleared the way for the Republican-led House to vote this week to renew for 10 months the tax cut set to expire on February 29.

The Democratic-led Senate would likely support the payroll tax extension as laid out by the Republicans, even though they prefer including in the deal provisions on jobless benefits and payments for doctors treating Medicare patients that Republicans now want to negotiate separately.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Sell out ?

[Lazlo in PA]

What a stellar leader we have in Boner. Way to fight for America Congressmen.

[SaxxonWoods]

(GOP gives up and lets Obama play his games)

Tobyhill, there’s a knife hidden in Obama’s cake on this one.

Allowing the payroll tax to extend and not requiring any cuts to pay for it means that we will be having another debt ceiling discussion in September instead of November.

[skeeter]

Well, that would certainly ‘get out the (EBT) vote’, wouldn’t it?

[Cheerio]

GOP - scared to DEATH of the Obama main stream propaganda machine. Goebels would be sooooo proud of the example he set. If you want to see what is coming, study history. People and their habits have not changed.

[Breto]

Boner needs an intervention. Yo John, put down the bottle and stop crying... Then please go away...

[Republican Wildcat]

They should never have tried this to begin with and just passed it through clean as quickly as possible. Giving Obama and the Dems the narrative on this was politically very damaging last year. On the things where we had an advantage, they rolled over easy, but on something they should not have fought, they charged ahead and fought tooth and nail and buried themselves...makes NO sense.

[Revel]

Just to refresh people on the fact that this is cut to the Social Security Payroll Tax. Social Security is already in the RED. So this Tax goes right onto the national debt. Even the unborn Children get to pay for the old folks social security.

[okie01]

Allowing the payroll tax to extend and not requiring any cuts to pay for it means that we will be having another debt ceiling discussion in September instead of November.

At which point, our dauntless Republicans will...do what?

Stomp their feet? Hold their breath and turn blue? Make idle threats? Run for cover? Cave in? What?

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

We know Boehner will cry...

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I fear we might as well kiss the House away this November. For all of his damnation and hellfire speaking when he is on the minority side of an issue, he can't even get ban on incandescent light bulbs.

He can party. He can tell his new bff’s that talking to the o-boy is like talking to a rock. He can't be an effective Speaker. It cuts into his party time.

[bobsunshine]

Another way at looking at it is the GOP separated the tax cuts from the other Dem demands, unemployment extension and doc fix. Thus this is a clean bill. If the GOP included the other provisions, that they didn’t support, they would have to vote down the bill and thus “not allow” a tax cut in an election year, as seen by the people.

Also, as mentioned, this moves the debt ceiling talks to before the election versus after.

[tobyhill]

It's ok now because most Americans have the attention span of a gnat.

[Cheerio]

And the pundits are "perplexed" about low turnout at the caucuses and primaries and just cannot figure it out. Duh, one doesn't have to be a political scientist or a pollster to understand that the Tea Party sent their reps to the district of corruption on Jan 3, 2011 to STOP THE RATS. Not very successful so far, and I can certainly understand why there is a lack of enthusiasm for 2012. The GOP House had three chances to STOP this madness and caved in all three cases where they held a royal flush, and then had the gonads to hold press conferences to tell how they got what they wanted - e.g. promise the base $100 BILLION in CUTS, and settle for $30 million in less growth. Why - scared to death of the Gobels media.

IF OBAMA is given a second term, SCOTUS will be changed for the rest of our life time and he will take your guns away. Count on it!!!

Obama wants to outlaw guns in 2nd term

[mrsmith]

“...provisions on jobless benefits and payments for doctors treating Medicare patients that Republicans now want to negotiate separately”

This modest success for the House- McConnell has had to get his Senate Rinos to agree to 2/3 of what we wanted last time- would not have happened without the earlier fight.

Sure, there’s an easier case to make that these need to be paid for with spending cuts.

Still, starving SS is irresponsible.

[GeronL]

The GOP always, always caves!

[Republican Wildcat]

Don’t misunderstand me - the argument was legitimate, but just wasn’t the right one to wage since Obama had framed it to give him the advantage on the narrative. It got Obamacare, etc. off the discussion block.

[Political Junkie Too]

They're supposed to be building the planks upon which the Republican candidates and eventual nominee will run.

Do they not understand this?

-PJ

[arnoldfwilliams]

Let's see what happens when the Republicans do this. 1. They are visibly cooperating with Obama's stated program. 2. They are ensuring that the next blowup on the debt occurs in September before the election. This is the equivalent of "give him enough rope to hang himself, and fight the battle when he can't afford to." Not bad.