It’s gut check time for Congressional Democrats on the payroll tax cut bill.Beutler explains that while it would be a political embarrassment if they cave, the policy is actually a bit more benign --- it will have to be decided in 2 months and the State Department has said that it will kill the proposal if the bill forces the decision now. The kicker of course, is that the Republicans want to use it to pressure Obama to overrule the State Department throughout the election.
Regarding that legislation, Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell emails me with the following statement: “The Leader will not support any bill without the Keystone XL language as part of the agreement.”
House Speaker John Boehner is also insisting that he’ll amend any Senate-passed payroll tax cut bill to add the Keystone provision to it, if it’s not already in there. So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama now have a choice: stick to their guns and object to the provision — at the risk of allowing the payroll tax cut (and unemployment insurance and the Medicare “doc fix”) to expire? Or give in to the GOP.
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