Payroll Tax Cut

GOP Goes To War With Itself Over Payroll Cut

Brian Beutler | December 19, 2011, 5:30PM

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) conducts a news conference along with fellow GOP members on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on November 30, 2011.

A civil war between House Republicans and their Senate counterparts had gone public over the possibility that the GOP will be held to blame if the current payroll tax cut expires on January 1. The Senators feel abandoned after having voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to pass a two month extension of the holiday -- only to have conservatives in the House GOP conference reject it publicly, and insult the legislation itself.

GOP Leaders on both sides of the Capitol are trying to contain the fallout, but with vulnerable Senate Republicans exposed, and the payroll tax cut set to lapse in less than two weeks, that's a tall order.

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Payroll Tax Cut

Standoff: A Guide To The Ongoing Fight Over The Payroll Tax Cut

Brian Beutler | December 19, 2011, 1:25PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and President Barack Obama

At a Capitol press conference Monday morning, House Speaker John Boehner told reporters he expects his members will kill the bipartisan, Senate-passed, two-month payroll tax cut bill. Instead he said Republicans will insist that Senate Democrats return to Washington and hash out the differences between that package, and the partisan one-year bill the House GOP passed a week ago.

That's setting up a new round in the ongoing fight over how to prevent that tax cut -- and other expiring policies like emergency unemployment benefits, and reimbursement rates for Medicare physicians -- from expiring.

Where we go from here depends on Boehner making good on his threat. To that end House and Senate Democrats, along with key Senate Republicans -- who voted for the compromise measure, and whom Boehner is hanging out to dry -- are pressing the House GOP to follow through on the deal.

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