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AP Sources: House GOP bill renews jobless benefit

danarhea

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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are drafting legislation to renew an expiring unemployment benefits program, officials said Thursday, and intend to add it to a planned extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut due to run out on Dec. 31.

The measure is expected on the House floor as early as next week, and marks the second sign in as many days that lawmakers in both parties are eager to close out the year with a compromise on key elements of President Barack Obama's jobs program.

If it wasn't for the pressure put on the Republican Party by OWS, resulting in their being seen as only for the wealthy, and not for anybody else, I don't believe we would be seeing this.

This is a good compromise for the GOP to make, and will do much to improve their image in the eyes of independent voters, who they will need if they are going to seriously challenge Obama in 2012.

Article is here.
 
If it wasn't for the pressure put on the Republican Party by OWS, resulting in their being seen as only for the wealthy, and not for anybody else, I don't believe we would be seeing this.

This is a good compromise for the GOP to make, and will do much to improve their image in the eyes of independent voters, who they will need if they are going to seriously challenge Obama in 2012.

Article is here.

now if they can just renew the ss cut and pay for it by a surcharge on income over 1MM.
 
If it wasn't for the pressure put on the Republican Party by OWS, resulting in their being seen as only for the wealthy, and not for anybody else, I don't believe we would be seeing this.

This is a good compromise for the GOP to make, and will do much to improve their image in the eyes of independent voters, who they will need if they are going to seriously challenge Obama in 2012.

Article is here.

What a ****ing a cop out. "We're the party of cutting spending... oh wait... not REALLY! SEE SEE?? We care!!"

Of course, we cannot afford MORE social welfare programs, but let's spend that money our great grands kids haven't earned yet.
 
now if they can just renew the ss cut and pay for it by a surcharge on income over 1MM.

That bill is also being sent through the House by the GOP. They are clearly offering to compromise now.
 
They could have done far better by putting tight limits on what Bernanke can do.
 
If the government would stop killing jobs, it wouldn't be an issue.
 
If the government would stop killing jobs, it wouldn't be an issue.

Still waiting for you to explain how the government is killing jobs.....
 
If it wasn't for the pressure put on the Republican Party by OWS, resulting in their being seen as only for the wealthy, and not for anybody else, I don't believe we would be seeing this.

This is a good compromise for the GOP to make, and will do much to improve their image in the eyes of independent voters, who they will need if they are going to seriously challenge Obama in 2012.

Article is here.


Deeper in the article … we have this

Senate Democrats want to levy a 3.5 percent surtax on million-dollar tax filers to cover the costs, while Senate Republicans unveiled an alternative on Wednesday that relies on freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government's bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs. The bill also would raise Medicare premiums for the wealthy, and take steps to deny unemployment benefits and food stamps to anyone with a seven-figure income.

Which clearly shows, once again, that Dem's have no interest in cutting spending. Spend more tax more, that is their only fix for anything.
But it's going to be interesting, to see how the public sees it. Over bloated federal workers pay, frozen for 3 years, along with reducing federal jobs by 200,000. If the Dem”s don't go for this, then it could be seen by john q public as protecting their own while telling middle class Americans to **** off.

Of course Democrats will be saying see .. . the Republicans are just protecting the rich like they always do. This time however the Republicans have an alternate plan out there, that many middle class Americans would agree with as well. Be interesting to see how this plays out ..
 
If the Dem”s don't go for this, then it could be seen by john q public as protecting their own while telling middle class Americans to **** off.

Of course Democrats will be saying see .. . the Republicans are just protecting the rich like they always do. This time however the Republicans have an alternate plan out there, that many middle class Americans would agree with as well. Be interesting to see how this plays out ..

So in the middle of the economic issues we're in one sides answer is just to tax tax tax and the other sides answer is to increase spending even more and increase unemployment.

Great...so excited.
 
What a ****ing a cop out. "We're the party of cutting spending... oh wait... not REALLY! SEE SEE?? We care!!"

Of course, we cannot afford MORE social welfare programs, but let's spend that money our great grands kids haven't earned yet.

Yeah! We need that money for more $300 million fighter planes built for a war that never happened!
 
Yeah! We need that money for more $300 million fighter planes built for a war that never happened!

I call them the "but this time it's different" crowd.
 
now if they can just renew the ss cut and pay for it by a surcharge on income over 1MM.

The SS cut will cost us $265 billion dollars.

A tax hike on millionaires will get us $21.5 billion.

Are you going to make up the remaining $243.5 billion ???
 
The SS cut will cost us $265 billion dollars.

A tax hike on millionaires will get us $21.5 billion.

Are you going to make up the remaining $243.5 billion ???

i think i've decided that the ss cut should only remain active for those making under 50k. and a freeze on federal salaries, and an across the board fed jobs cut.
 
i think i've decided that the ss cut should only remain active for those making under 50k. and a freeze on federal salaries, and an across the board fed jobs cut.

WOW, we actually agree.

I resent the drop in SS contributions since this greatly affects future retirement checks. Pay less now, get less later. I'd rather pay now while I can afford it and get it back after retiring and not working.
 
So you're just to the point of full out admitting to taking from the rich to give to the poor then?

Strangely enough, I'm actually for the SS cut to expire across the board. Social Security is on extremely shaky ground right now, it needs to be reformed. What it doesn't need is even less money being paid into it while we're still on the hook for all of the paying out.
 
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i think i've decided that the ss cut should only remain active for those making under 50k. and a freeze on federal salaries, and an across the board fed jobs cut.

Are you going to also reduce the ss benefits for those under 50k too?
 
Strangely enough, I'm actually for the SS cut to expire across the board. Social Security is on extremely shaky ground right now, it needs to be reformed. What it doesn't need is even less money being paid into it while we're still on the hook for all of the paying out.

I also think an across the board mandated federal jobs cut to be incredibly stupid and harmful to the economy. Yes, lets just voluntarily kick up the unemployment numbers blindly in the name of compromise. I have no issue cutting federal jobs. Get an outside firm to do an agency by agency review to determine how many positions could be cut and still run effectively, and then go with those numbers rather than placing an arbitrary number on it.

Additionally, if you're cutting 200,000 federal workers jobs without some kind of targetted independent review from the top down, you're likely going to be seeing primarily low end individuals cut and not your top end beuracracy. The lower end of the scale are typically your individuals who, unlike those higher up that have been in the government for some time, are making less than their private sector equivilents. With cuts you are then increasing their work load to cover the loss of man power while combining it with a freeze making it even less attractive for those who survive the cuts to stay in the job rather than begin to look at the private sector. How about, instead of a pay freeze, you simply freeze step increases during that time period. This still saves significant money and removes the "automatic raise" type of situation that exists. However, it still allows there to be corrections based on the economic situation of the country, such as Cost of Living and inflation increases, as well as individualized work quality based awarded raises that are significantly smaller than the step raises that can occur. This would still save money while not completely locking federal employees into a low pay while having additional work heaped onto them.
 
Are you going to also reduce the ss benefits for those under 50k too?

no, why? ss is already a regressive tax. in fact, we should just up the tax cutoff to 250k.
 
Even though it may result in a larger defacto tax increase, I'd much rather up the SS cap than raise the top brackets income tax rate. However, to go along with that, I'd want to see Social Security taxes go into a seperate fund that is not part of the general revenue stream. If the amount of SS tax doesn't cover the pay outs for this year, it can borrow from the general fund. However, the general fund can't borrow from the SS fund. If there's leftover money in the SS fund at the end of the year, it just should roll over into the next year.

Without taking the increased money out of the hands of politicians so they can't just use it on other spending making it worthless to even call it a "SS tax", and without raising the level of benefits cutoff as well sa the tax, then I couldn't support a SS tax increase.

Ultimately however I still feel that should be a short term help to keep it solvent whlie we begin a phased removal of it over the next 30 to 50 years
 
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no, why? ss is already a regressive tax. in fact, we should just up the tax cutoff to 250k.

Goto the SS website, they have an estimator on there. Once you put your target salary over the current cutoff, 106k, your benefit never goes up.

Everytime you bump up the tax cutoff, they have to increase the max benefit. If they are going to reduce the contribution rate by 1/3, then they should reduce the benefit by 1/3 too.
 
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