Boehner: "Welcome to Divided Government"

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) began his weekly press conference saying that the House bill passed yesterday to extend payroll tax cuts was a bipartisan effort.

“Did this bill have everything the Republicans wanted? Certainly not. Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted either. But that’s how divided government works. At the same time everything in the House passed bill has bipartisan support. Payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits… bipartisan.” Boehner said.

He went on to say that the bill is fully paid for and 90 percent of the offsets are based on ideas from President Obama. There is a provision in the bill that eliminates tax payer funded benefits  for millionaires and billionaires.

The Speaker added that there are provisions in the current legislation that will jumpstart Keystone Pipeline projects which will create thousands of jobs in this struggling economy.

 When asked about a recent Pew Research Poll that said nearly 70 percent of Americans feel that members of Congress do not deserve to be reelected next year, Boehner said “welcome to divided government.”

“The American people provided a Republican House, a Democratic Senate and a Democrat in the White House. As a result we have to work overtime to find common ground to do what the American people sent us here to do. It’s not pretty and not easy,” Boehner replied.

At an earlier press briefing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the “House Republican bill was doomed from the start.” She added that she would not go home for the holidays without extending  payroll tax cuts.

Payroll Tax Battle Heads To Senate

House Republicans were successful in passing legislation Tuesday that would extend payroll-tax cuts to 2013 and would expedite a White House decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. 

The 234-193 vote sends the Republican-crafted bill to Senate Democrats who have arduously opposed the bill and have already signaled the bill would be dead-on-arrival. 

Following the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took immediate action and called for a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Republicans’ top senator, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), told Reid he needed more time to organize his conference. Reid, in turn, criticized McConnell for blocking a Senate vote on the House’s payroll package. 

A vote in the upper chamber, however, will likely be the House-passed bill’s demise. Senate Democrats said that they will continue to pursue a surtax on millionaires as a pay-for for the payroll-tax holiday, a notion Republicans have argued is counter-intuitive. 

Meanwhile, the White House, which threatened to veto the bill Tuesday, released a statement following the House vote that labeled Republicans as ideologues practicing gamesmanship. 

“This Congress needs to do its job and stop the tax hike that’s scheduled to affect 160 million Americans in 18 days,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement. “This is not a time for Washington Republicans to score political points against the President.  It’s not a time to refight old ideological battles.”

Moving forward, Congress must act on two key issues; passing extenders and an omnibus bill that keeps the government funded past Friday. However, Republicans have accused Senate Democrats for holding a House-passed, $1 trillion omnibus bill “hostage” until both parties can agree on a “more acceptable” extension of the payroll-tax package. 

Democrats have defended this accusation by voicing concern over the possibility the House would pass its version of the extender and payroll bills then skip town, forcing the Senate to take up the bills without any changes.

Congress now has two days to keep the government funded past Friday and just over two weeks before Americans see their paychecks shrink in 2013.

GOP Leaders Downplay Dip In Jobless Rate

House GOP leaders downplayed the dip in the nation’s unemployment rate from 9 percent to 8.6 percent Friday morning, the lowest recorded rate in nearly three years.

“Today’s unemployment numbers certainly look good on its surface,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said at a Friday press conference. “If you look at the number of new jobs created, there’s just not enough new jobs being created in America.”

According to the latest unemployment numbers, the economy added 120,000 jobs in November. Despite seeing jobs totals reach at least 100,000 in the past three months - September numbers were revised showing 210,000 new jobs were added, an uptick of 52,000 from the initial report - House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voiced his concern over the period of time in which the jobless rate has remained above 8 percent. 

“The jobless rate in our country is still unacceptably high, Boehner said. “Today marks the 34th consecutive month of unemployment above eight percent.”

Though Republican leaders welcomed the dip in the unemployment rate as “good news,” they remained skeptical of Obama’s economic agenda. Boehner used the opportunity to call on President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate to take up 25 House-passed bills, all of which are considered job creators by House Republicans.

“It is time for the president to admit, after being able to enact all the major tenants of his agenda… that ultimately his policies are not working,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said. “We would ask Mr. President to please asks Mr. Reid to pass our jobs bills.”

Dems React To Boehner's Resistance On China Bill

By Adrianna McGinley

House Republicans must schedule a vote on a bill addressing Chinese currency manipulation, said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and other House Democrats on Tuesday.

The House Ways and Means Committee ranking Democrat and other supporters of the bill said the legislation would create jobs in the U.S.

“There’s been no jobs legislation that has come out of the Republican majority here,” Levin said. “This is a jobs bill, and it is coming over most certainly from the Senate, and so the question will be whether the House leadership will let us vote on it. They know if it comes up for a vote, it will pass.”

Democrats who spoke took issue with House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) assertion that the bill would be “dangerous” for Congress to take up.

“This is a message from the Republican party, from Speaker Boehner, to all those small and medium size manufacturers all across the industrial Midwest that your help…is dead on arrival,” said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). “The Republican party no longer represents the small and medium size manufacturer.”

Levin said his years of experience in trade dismiss concerns from critics who say the bill could lead to a “trade war” with China. Levin said American businesses are already on an uneven playing field with the industrial powerhouse.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) heavily criticized Republicans for not acting on the bill, saying they are inhibiting economic recovery.

“They don’t want Barack Obama to have one bit of success,” said the ranking member of the House Trade Subcommittee. “They will do anything to our economy in order to prevent him from having any lessening of the unemployment rate in this country.”

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) agreed, saying Congress not only needs to act on this bill, but also on the president’s jobs bill, and he urged reporters to ask Republicans “why won’t you take up the job creation bills?”

Senate Beats Deadline, Approves Stopgap Measure

UPDATE: By a vote of 79-12, the Senate on Monday approved a stopgap measure to keep the government funded through November 18.

Click here for more…

This story was updated for a second time at 7:38 pm EST

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will hold a vote Monday night on a bill to keep the government funded through November 19 and provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency with nearly $3.7 billion in funding. 

The Senate bill mirrors a House-passed bill that was shot down by the upper chamber Friday. The only difference is that proposed spending cuts aimed at offsetting FEMA’s funding are excluded from the Senate’s version. 

Though FEMA is running short on time and was previously expected to exhaust the little funding it has left by Tuesday, Senate aides have indicated that the disaster aide agency actually has enough money to keep it operational through Thursday. 

If Congress fails to act before Friday, Sept. 30, the United States government will face the threat of a government shutdown for the third time in 2011.

This story was updated at 11:24a.m. EST…

Washington, D.C. - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called on House GOP leadership to “cool off” and requested they meet with him over the weekend to hash out an agreement on funding the government and keeping FEMA afloat.

The move, which puts next week’s prospects of a congressional recess on hold, comes on the heels of the upper chamber’s rejection of a spending measure the House passed early Friday that would keep the government funded through November 19.  

The Senate voted 59 to 36 Friday in favor of tabling the House’s proposal.  

“If [House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)] thought he could just send us this bill… and leave town, I think he ought to take a look at the roll call we just had,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters, referring to the 7 Republican senators who crossed party lines to table the House’s bill.  

A Senate bill that Democratic leaders now say matches the $3.65 billion in FEMA funding proposed by the House is scheduled to be considered Monday evening, but does not include the GOP’s spending cuts offsetting emergency funding. 

In fact, Reid shot down the notion of adding offsets to the Senate’s bill when asked by reporters if he would consider the move should the Senate bill fail Monday.

Prior to Reid’s request to meet with Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) over the weekend, the House GOP leaders indicated at an earlier press conference that the House planned to adjourn as scheduled following Friday votes. 

With FEMA expected to exhaust its current budget by early next week, Cantor said regarding the possibility of returning next week, “If we are back, that means Harry Reid has shut down FEMA.”

Click here to see photos from today’s press conference.