House GOP Snubs Dems' Plan To Recall Senate Payroll Package

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) were snubbed by House Republicans Wednesday as they sought to call up, yet again, the Senate-passed payroll tax cut extension. 

Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) was serving as the presiding officer in the House when Hoyer and Van Hollen asked to be recognized to speak on the House floor. Fitzpatrick, however, failed to recognize the Maryland duo and gaveled the session closed to a protesting Hoyer. 

“You’re walking out, you’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class taxpayers,” Hoyer said on the floor as Fitzpatrick closed the session and left the chamber. “We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing the issue of critical importance to this country.”

Hoyer then yielded time to Van Hollen who was cut off when the microhphones were shutdown and the cameras stopped rolling. The House Recording Studio decided to end C-SPAN’s coverage of the floor while Hoyer and Van Hollen continued to call for unanimous consent on taking up a House version of the payroll package that mirrors that which passed the Senate. 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support for the efforts pursued by Hoyer and Van Hollen, saying that House Republicans “voted yesterday to raise taxes on the middle class.”

“House Republicans stand alone, and unless they act responsibly and agree to the bipartisan short-term bill approved by Senate Republicans and Democrats, millions of Americans will see a tax hike,” Pelosi said in a statement. The House GOP must listen to the American people and allow a cote on the bipartisan Senate compromise.” 

Both Hoyer and Van Hollen said that they would “be here everyday, waiting for [the House Speaker and House Republicans] to come to the floor of the House to take up this legislation and get it done.”

House GOP leaders and conferees continue to push for Senate Democrats to appoint its own group of negotiators to conference with the lower chamber, but Democrats seem adamant about first passing a two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday before renegotiating a year-long extension early in 2012. 

Neither party, however, has answered questions over how the end of the year would develop without any progress. Moving forward, it seems as though the first to blink will concede; the problem is, their eyes may already be closed.