Congressman Jeff Miller Newsletter - 12/20/2011

The Christmas season is upon us, and most Americans are thinking about spending time with their family and celebrating the holidays.  Unfortunately, Congress still has unfinished business to attend to.  Many news reports this week have misrepresented the facts and blamed House Republicans for holding up an agreement on extending the payroll tax cut.  I think it is important to set the record straight. 

Last week, the House passed a bill to extend the payroll tax cut for all of 2012, leaving more of the people’s hard earned money in their own pockets.  Our bill would also help to create jobs through provisions to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, overturn harmful EPA MACT rules—which according to EPA’s own estimates would cost businesses billions of dollars, while also raising electricity rates by nearly 10 percent in the next decade and putting thousands of jobs at risk—and extend 100 percent expensing for investments in new equipment to help businesses expand and hire new employees.  The bill passed by House Republicans would also provide certainty to seniors by ensuring that doctors who treat seniors with Medicare would not see their reimbursement rates cut by nearly 30 percent. 

Unfortunately, rather than work with the House to extend these benefits for a full year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to hold a vote on a temporary two-month payroll tax holiday that would leave the American people and small businesses in a state of continued uncertainty.  In fact, according to the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, a non-partisan group that represents organizations that provide payroll processing services for more than 1.5 million businesses, this two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”  Harry Reid’s payroll tax holiday would actually place substantial costs on employers and therefore deter them from increasing the size of their workforce.

Harry Reid’s payroll tax holiday fails to bring the certainty that businesses need to grow.  His bill also fails to address many important issues that were included in our payroll tax cut legislation.  While the House extended the payroll tax cut 12 months, the Senate bill extended them for only two months.  So, while House Republicans would give the average family making $50,000 a year an estimated $1,000 tax cut, the Senate would put just $166 back in the pockets of working families.  While the House included fundamental reforms to the unemployment compensation system, designed to help unemployed Americans get the education and training they need to be competitive in the job market, the Senate decided to simply hand out these checks for two more months.  While the House included provisions to save taxpayers $9 billion by cracking down on fraud and abuse, the Senate simply ignored the problem. 

Instead of doing further harm to our recovering economy by burdening America’s businesses with two months of uncertainty, House Republicans want to remove the wet blanket hovering over our economy and provide twelve months of certainty for American families and businesses.  Today, with the vast majority of Senators already on vacation, House Republicans remained at work.  We passed a bill to create a conference committee between the House and Senate to resolve our differences, and House Republicans remain committed to working through the Christmas season to find a way to extend this tax cut for all of 2012.  But, yet again, Senator Reid seems willing to hold up the entire process by dictating that the House accepts his amendment.  While House Republicans were busy trying to find a solution, Senator Reid said, “I will not re-open negotiations until the House follows through and passes this agreement.”  This abdication of the Senate’s responsibility to work for the American people is unfathomable.  Harry Reid needs to call Senators back from their vacation and work with the House to extend the payroll tax cut in a way that will help, not harm, our economy.  The time to create certainty and help our job creators put unemployed Americans back to work is now.