Reid, Boehner spar over payroll tax

“It would seem those energies could be better directed toward the conference negotiations themselves, in which Senate Democrats have not actually presented a full plan,” Boehner said in a Friday statement. “You can’t have a ‘backup plan’ if you haven’t offered anything to back up.”

{mosads}The House passed a yearlong extension in December, but it incorporated items that Democrats oppose and that Reid was presumably referencing with his Friday comments, including a delay of industrial boiler regulations and certain reforms to the federal unemployment insurance system.

GOP conferees would like to see some of those items tucked into a package extending the payroll tax cut for a full year.

The Senate passed a two-month extension of the tax break after being unable to pass a full year of the cut. House Republicans, after taking a political pounding, eventually accepted that idea, leading to the current conference committee.

In addition to the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits for millions of Americans will also expire if lawmakers don’t act by Feb. 29, and doctors treating Medicare patients would see a 27 percent cut in their reimbursement rate.

For the most part, conferees have said they want to see those three items extended for a full year.

But the conference committee, which will meet again on Tuesday, has also spent much of its time discussing issues in other areas, such as the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and expired tax provisions.

The two sides also have separate visions on how to pay for any extension, as illustrated by the Friday statements from Reid and Boehner.

Reid reiterated that a surtax on millionaires could be used to pay for the tax relief, an idea embraced by other Democrats but that has failed to make it out of the Senate on multiple occasions.

Boehner, meanwhile, noted that a federal pay freeze, one of the GOP’s preferred offsets, easily passed the House this week.