Last week the Senate, in rare bipartisan action, passed a compromise bill, 89 to 10, to extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut another two months and continue to pay physicians at the current rate for treating Medicare patients.
Pleased with themselves, the senators went home for the holidays, confident that the House would agree with their decision.
They were confident the bill would pass because House Speaker John Boehner had told Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, to work out a compromise with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which the two proceeded to do.
Boehner’s request was a tacit pledge to support what McConnell and Reid cobbled together.
By Sunday, the agreement fell apart. House rank and file Republicans would have nothing to do with it and told Speaker Boehner they would defeat the bill if it came up for a vote.
Here’s how Rep. Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York, put it: “I am adamantly opposed to a short-term two-month extension bill. Enough is enough. If that’s what the Senate believes is leadership, then I believe the Senate is a complete failure. We want to do long-term policy, not short-term politics. The American people deserve more than short-term Band-Aids.”
While Mr. Reed makes good points, he neglected to point out that Speaker Boehner and Sen. McConnell were star actors in this comedy.
Senate Democrats thought they had the speaker’s support for an agreement that Senate Republicans would reach with them. And, goodness knows, Boehner and McConnell should have been in communication over the details before the bill went to the Senate floor.
What happened Sunday showed that the speaker and minority leader were both out of the loop. Both obviously believed that a majority of House members would accept the compromise and follow the senators home for Christmas.
IT STILL is possible that enough Republicans will join House Democrats in approving the bill to send it to the president. It is more likely, however, that they will not. They may, instead, pass their own bill and expect the senators to trot back to Washington to spend Christmas arm wrestling over a new set of details — two holidays and a few days away from the deadline.
The alternative will be to allow the payroll tax to go back up on Jan. 1, take unemployment benefits away from the most needy of the long-term unemployed and provoke a crisis in Medicare.
Boy, what a devastating set of Christmas presents that would be to the country from the Grand Old Party!
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
