{"id":7126,"date":"2012-02-14T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T08:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7126"},"modified":"2012-02-14T00:01:27","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T08:01:27","slug":"a-win-for-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/14\/a-win-for-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"A Win for Democrats?"},"content":{"rendered":"

House Republicans appear to have caved in on the payroll tax cut extension, because they say they are willing to pass it without paying for it.  While this seems to be a win for Democrats, I\u2019m not so sure.  There are things about this that do not satisfy me, because they leave a future minefield.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"14Unemployed\"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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Notably, the offer was issued by both House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican, and his deputy Eric Cantor, who has often taken a more hardline approach in budget negotiations with Democrats over the past year\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Reuters<\/a>><\/p>\n

Here are the problems.  First, the Republican offer does not pay for the extensions.  That means that either the Social Security Trust Fund will not be reimbursed, or it will be reimbursed out the general budget.  The former weakens Social Security\u2019s viability, giving Republicans a talking point.  The latter ends the Democrats\u2019 claim that Social Security is paid for exclusively by contributions, also giving Republicans a talking point.  We need to pay for the extensions with a tiny income tax surcharge on people making over $1 million.<\/font><\/p>\n

Second, it separates out unemployment benefits and Medicare\u2019s \u2018Doc Fix\u2019.  Unless these are included, Republicans maintain a hostage to use in more economic terrorism, especially leaving the unemployed out in the cold.<\/font><\/p>\n

Ezra Klein and Brian Beutler are just as suspicious as I am.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

I certainly agree that Democrats must look this gift horse in the mouth, and modify it to include unemployment benefits and the \u2018Doc Fix\u2019.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Republicans appear to have caved in on the payroll tax cut extension, because they say they are willing to pass it without paying for it.  While this seems to be a win for Democrats, I\u2019m not so sure.  There are things about this that do not satisfy me, because they leave a future minefield. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}