US House scuttles short-term tax cuts bill
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Xinhua, December 21, 2011
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday scuttled a measure to extend the payroll tax cuts and federal jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed for two months, adding a new twist to a dramatic year- end confrontation with the Senate.
The motion to disagree with the Senate bill was approved on a mostly party-line vote of 229 to 193, with no Democrats supporting it.
The Senate voted on Saturday and approved a two-month extension of payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. The legislation, passed by an 89-10 vote, also contained a provision demanded by Republicans to speed up the approval of the construction of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline.
Facing mounting pressure from GOP House lawmakers, House Speaker John Boehner scheduled the Tuesday vote to reject the Senate measure, and sent the thorny issue to a House-Senate conference committee to bridge differences, a formal legislative step often circumvented nowadays on major issues that are resolved by closed-door negotiations of high-profile leaders.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, has said that Democrats would be willing to resume negotiations with Republicans only if the House passed the two-month Senate version as a stopgap measure to ensure that the payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits would not lapse at the start of 2012.
"The clock is ticking," U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters during a surprise visit on Tuesday to the White House press briefing room after the House vote. He urged House Republicans to vote on the short-term Senate bill and avoid a tax hike for 160 million American workers at the start of next year.
In a competing press conference after the House vote, Boehner said the short-term extension would "create more uncertainty" for the nation's job creators, and the two parties should resolve their differences as quickly as possible.
The short-term extension was "kicking the can down the road," while eight GOP negotiators were ready to work with Democrats on this issue, said Boehner.
"There are a lot of ways to resolve this. We're doing this under what we would call regular order, the system that our founders gave us. If there's a difference between the two houses we sit down and resolve those differences," said Boehner, referring to the House-Senate conference committee.
The House on Dec. 13 passed a one-year payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits extension bill that was linked with the speedy approval of the oil pipeline and contained new budget deficit cuts, which were opposed by the White House and the Democrat-controlled upper chamber.
The short-term extension bill sailing through the Senate on Saturday was the latest compromise by U.S. senators. After GOP House lawmakers balked at the Senate measure, Republican leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Boehner began to walk away from the bipartisan deal.
At issue was how to cover the revenue loss of the Social Security Trust Fund due to the one-year payroll tax cuts, with Republicans demanding further slash of government outlays and Democrats seeking a higher income tax rate for the super-rich.
A typical U.S. family with an annual income of 50,000 dollars would pay 1,000 dollars more in payroll taxes if Congress does not act by the end of this year to extend that reduction, according to the White House.
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