The party continues to fight over its support for things like the continuation of payroll tax breaks and student loan bill rate extensions and transportation financing.
Proven policies to increase aggregate spending and near-term job growth, like the continuation of payroll tax relief and infrastructure investment, appear to be off the table.
Given the effort Democrats are making to capitalize on the issue, Speaker John A. Boehner warned Republicans they would run political risks and could be accused of allowing a tax increase if they blocked the continuation of payroll tax relief set to expire at the end of the year.
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Senate Republican, denounced Mr. Reid's proposal for its continuation of the payroll tax holiday.
A concrete way to adjust gradually is to pair serious long-run deficit reduction measures with equally serious, near-term jobs measures — like a sizable short-run infrastructure program and a one-year continuation of the payroll tax cut for working families first passed in 2010.
The plan the Obama administration presented to House Republicans last week called for the continuation of the payroll tax cut or a replacement by a tax cut of similar size and design.
We watched last week as the campaigner in chief headed to New Hampshire to sell the continuation of the payroll tax cut to an ever-dwindling number of middle-class workers, who will otherwise see $1,000 more snatched from their paychecks next year if this tax break expires.
One other important item that President Obama did not fight for, Lizza notes, is a continuation of the payroll-tax holiday that was instituted in response to the economic crisis, and which, he says, "was not extended despite the economy still being kind of fragile".
Among job creation initiatives that experts say could emerge from Washington -- albeit, not without considerable congressional wrangling -- are the continuation of a temporary reduction on payroll taxes, and the extension of emergency unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for six months or longer.
Within a month of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama announced a compromise deal with the Congressional Republican leadership that included a temporary, two-year extension of the 2001 and 2003 income tax rates, a one-year payroll tax reduction, continuation of unemployment benefits, and a new rate and exemption amount for estate taxes.
A different treatment of payroll variables alters the role of salary dispersion.
