Pelosi Shuns Keystone Pipeline Inclusion For Job Bills

By Janie Amaya

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday that including the Keystone XL Pipeline in a jobs bill is not a responsible way to create jobs and has no place in the bill, during her weekly news briefing.

After meeting with President Obama and the House Democratic leadership earlier in the day, Pelosi said it is necessary for something to be done before year’s end.

“The president pressed upon us, and we all agreed, that we can’t go home for the holidays until we pass a payroll tax cut for working families in our country and extend unemployment insurance,” Pelosi said.

She argued that Republicans continue to resist a federal tax cut that could help million Americans and said it is just not right.

“The Congressional Republicans are holding up a payroll tax cut that will help 160 million Americans. They are holding that up because they want to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest 300,000,” Pelosi said.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he is in agreement with President Obama that the American people can not  wait on jobs any longer.

“We agree whole-heartedly with the president. The Keystone Pipeline project will create tens and thousands of jobs immediately. It has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate,” Boehner said.
   
However, Pelosi said, “Republicans are trying to associate themselves with the tax cuts, but not without injecting… ‘poison pills’ into the legislation they know will not possibly pass the Senate.”

Reid Pushes GOP To Accept Payroll Tax Cut Extension

By Adrianna McGinley

The Senate will this week vote on a bill to extend tax cuts for millions of American workers.

The Middle Class Tax Cut Act of 2011 would keep in place a payroll tax rate of 4.2 percent for employees. Employers would continue to pay a rate of 6.2 percent. The revenue generated by the payroll tax funds America’s Social Security program.

The measure is part of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, and has been introduced in the upper chamber by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). The White House and congressional Democrats estimate that if Congress fails to act by the end of the year, the average middle-class taxpayer would see his or her taxes go up by roughly $1,500 next year.

Though Republicans pushed Obama to pass the bill last year, at least one GOP’er has come out against extending it because of the fact that Social Security is currently running a deficit. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said during an interview on the Fox News Channel that his party may not support the bill due to Social Security concerns, as well as the fact that Democrats have proposed paying for it by raising taxes on the wealthy.

“By taxing the people who provide the jobs, you put off the day we have economic recovery and job creation in this country,” Kyl said. “And that’s precisely what the Democratic plan would do. It would hit those people, the small businesses who we all acknowledge are the ones who create the jobs coming out of economic difficulty.”

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, championed the bill on the Senate floor Monday.

“The average family held onto $935 more of their hard-earned dollars this year. We need to assure those families that they can rely on that tax cut next year as well,” Reid said.

“Cutting taxes for middle-class families and business should be an area where Republicans and Democrats can find common ground,” Reid added. “This Republican opposition smacks of partisanship. Because this tax cut has President Obama’s fingerprints, Republicans won’t support it even though they know it is good policy for American families and businesses.”

Reid and other Democrats also highlighted a statement made by independent economic analyst Mark Zandi, who said that without the tax cut, “we’d be in recession right now.

“If they don’t [renew and increase the payroll tax cuts], at the very minimum, we’ll likely go into recession,” Zandi added.

Increasing Payroll Taxes Would Preserve Social Security, Say Dems

A group of four Democrats partnered on Wednesday to unveil legislation aimed at protecting Social Security benefits for America’s seniors.

Republicans have lately been citing government reports showing that the popular entitlement could run out of money by 2038, and most of the GOP candidates for President have embraced the idea of restructuring the program for younger Americans. Some Democrats, however, have argued that drastically reforming the program is a bad idea.

“Despite a lot of right wing rhetoric to the contrary, Social Security is not going broke and has not contributed one penny to our serious deficit problem,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

(Click here to see photos from today’s press conference)

Currently, Social Security is funded through payroll taxes paid by employers and employees. The cap on annual income subject to the tax is $106,800. According to the Social Security Administration, the program currently has a $2.5 trillion surplus and the Congressional Budget Office has reported that it can pay out every benefit to every eligible American for the next 27 years.

The Keeping Our Social Security Promises Act, proposed by Sanders, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) would strengthen Social Security’s coffers by applying the tax to any income generated over $250,000 per year. The concept, as noted by Sanders, was advocated for by President Obama back in 2008, who called for raising the payroll tax on wealthy Americans.

“This is a simple fix. It solves the whole problem in a way that should be embraced by everyone,” Boxer said.

Tension arose when a reporter asked the lawmakers to weigh in on President Obama’s recent proposal in the American Jobs Act to extend the payroll tax cut for another year.

“Do I think the middle class deserve a tax break in the midst of this horrendous recession?” Sanders asked. “I d, but I would very much prefer it not come from continuing the cuts that we’re seeing in the payroll taxing.”

Boxer, however, was adamant that the payroll tax cut bill has legislation built within it to restore funds. 

Yet as Boxer was defending the payroll tax cut, DeFazio was shaking his head in rejection of her claim that the funds would be restored.

“No more tax cuts,” Defazio declared angrily. “We have the economy that tax cuts will give us and it is pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”

Obama’s proposed extension of the payroll tax cut holiday has received criticism from both sides of the aisle.

Senate To Vote On Disclose Act Tomorrow

Despite losing key battles yesterday on repealing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ and the DREAM Act, the Senate will attempt one more major vote on Thursday.

That’s the day Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to bring the DISCLOSE Act to the floor. The bill, which the House passed in June, would require organizations involved in political campaigning to disclose the identity of their large donors and to reveal their identities in political ads they fund. It would also prohibit foreign corporations, government contractors and TARP recipients from making political donations.

The legislation was crafted in response to a Supreme Court decision in January that allowed corporations and unions to pay for political ads made independently of candidate campaigns.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a staunch proponent of the bill, told reporters on Wednesday that unless the Disclose Act is passed, “the winner of every upcoming election this November won’t be Democrats or Republicans; It will be special interests.”

“Passing [the bill] would be a huge win for restoring transparency to our elections,” he added.

Addressing concerns that Democrats are attempting to rush the bill through to help preserve their majority in Congress, Schumer said the legislation would not go into effect until January, two months after the midterms take place. Earlier today, a story that appeared on Politico noted that Democrats are being outspent badly by groups supporting Republican candidates.

Interestingly, Reid decided to schedule the vote on Thursday instead of today partly because a number of Senate Democrats were expected to attend a big-ticket fundraiser this evening in Manhattan, at which the president would be speaking.

Disclose will probably be the last big vote taken in the Senate before members return home in two weeks to campaign for reelection. When asked whether the upper chamber would hold a vote on whether to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, Schumer replied, “It’s being discussed within our caucus now.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday that his chamber would wait for the Senate to act on the tax cuts.

Pelosi Clarifies: No Tax Breaks For The Rich

During her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) elaborated little on the issue of extending tax cuts, saying the “only thing I can tell you is the tax cuts for the middle class will be extended this Congress.”

That statement prompted some reporters to question whether or not Pelosi was possibly considering supporting tax cuts for all Americans - a position supported by nearly all Republicans.

Politico’s Jake Sherman wrote that Pelosi’s comments left “open the possibility that cuts for people making more than $250,000 could be extended at some point, too.”

However, a spokesman for the Speaker clarified her remarks in a statement released hours later.

“The Speaker has made her position abundantly clear and has repeatedly said that she supports President Obama’s middle class tax cuts. The Speaker is opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent because they add hundreds of billions to the deficit and do not create jobs,” said spokesman Nadeam Elshami.

“As the Speaker said during her news conference today when asked whether she’s open to an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy, she responded: ‘not for the wealthy, no.’”

Pelosi’s number two in the House, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), made news earlier in the week when he told reporters that he would be willing “to discuss alternatives so we can move forward.”

Hoyer, however, quickly made it clear that he would not support furthering tax cuts for the nation’s top earners.

“Unfortunately, the reports of my answer implied a willingness to support an extension of Bush policies. That is incorrect.”
 
Pelosi did not say when she expects a vote on keeping the tax cuts alive to occur. If neither chamber can get a vote lined up in the next two weeks, then the issue will likely have to be taken up after the November elections.