Editorial: GOP caves on payroll tax cut

[ProSense]

Editorial: GOP caves on payroll tax cut

Swallowing hard, congressional Republican leaders have reversed course on a position that was a political loser from the start and only growing worse with time.

They agreed Monday to extend the payroll tax cut, thereby handing President Barack Obama a small victory. Moreover, they dropped their insistence that the tax cut, costing about $100 billion a year, be offset elsewhere in the budget.

Without that agreement — still subject to approval by the full Senate and House of Representatives — the payroll tax rate for 160 million Americans would have reverted to 6.2 percent from the current 4.2 percent, passed at the start of 2011 as a stimulus measure. The White House estimates the reduction saved the average American family $1,000 last year.

Late last year, the two parties fought an inconclusive battle over how to pay for the cut. Republicans proposed a 10 percent reduction in the federal workforce; Democrats sought a surtax on millionaires.

Somehow, the Republicans managed to paint themselves into a corner on the issue. Allowing the payroll tax to revert to its normal level — a tax increase, in the eyes of hard-core Republican lawmakers — goes against GOP orthodoxy. Refusing to extend the tax cut opened the GOP to the charge that the only tax cuts the party was interested in were those that benefited the wealthy.

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http://www.wickedlocal.com/hudson/news/opinions/x1730213266/Editorial-GOP-caves-on-payroll-tax-cut#axzz1mYfw5BDf

This editorial gets it exactly right. In fact, Republicans caved on the unemployment extension too. They wanted to cut it to 59 weeks.

Republicans claimed victory in reducing the number of weeks of jobless benefits that workers would be eligible to receive. The maximum number in states with the highest jobless rates would be cut from 99 weeks to 73 weeks by the end of the year, according to aides in both parties. Republicans had wanted to cut the maximum to 59 weeks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-payroll-tax-20120216,0,292176.story

They can claim victory, but the 73 weeks is not 59 weeks . In fact, Obama’s existing proposal dropped it to 79 weeks by the end of the year.

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t