◼ Boehner demands Senate cancel its vacation - Stephen Dinan/Washington Times
Racing to meet an end-of-year deadline, House Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday the House will insist on a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut and demanded senators cut short their Christmas vacation, return to Washington and hash out an agreement the old-fashioned way.◼ Senate refuses to renegotiate payroll tax cut deal - Reuters/WNEP
“The president has said repeatedly no one should be going on vacation until the work is done. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have said exactly the same thing,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said at a morning press conference.
Mr. Boehner stunned senators and the White House on Sunday when he rejected the bipartisan two-month deal the Senate passed a day earlier, 89-10. He said that doing tax cuts in two-month increments doesn’t give the economy certainty.
...The two-month extension was worked out by the top Republican and Democrat in the Senate. But Mr. Boehner said the House never signed off on the deal, and said he always had told senators he wouldn’t begin negotiating until the upper chamber actually produced a bill of its own to match up with the House, which earlier had passed a full-year extension of the 2 percentage point payroll tax cut.
According to the Senate schedule, senators are not supposed to return to town for another month.
