Payroll tax negotiations bumble along (Politico)

The payroll tax conference committee talked about boiler regulations, research and development tax credits, and business expensing during another round of negotiations on Thursday.

What they didn?t talk about was the payroll tax cut.

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Instead, the 20 lawmakers spent two hours on Thursday arguing over those policy provisions, among many others. And the conference committee hasn?t even started to dig through the monumental task of how to pay for the package that includes the popular tax holiday, unemployment insurance and the Medicare reimbursement rate ? choosing instead to punt that until later this month.

So time is running short before those provisions run out at February?s end ? a fact not lost the conferees.

?We have 27 days before our authority expires,? said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.). But ?we?re down to about 13 days of actual work to be done before the clock runs out ? I urge us to refocus.?

Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), who is chairing the panel, has made it repeatedly clear that he wanted conferees to negotiate policy matters first before tackling the sticky matter of how to pay for it.

But there are significant gulfs between Democrats and Republicans on policy matters as well, and Thursday?s session made no more than baby steps toward bridging that divide.

For instance, both Senate and House Republicans are insistent that the final package roll back boiler regulations, arguing that they create a significant burden on job growth.

?It is very, very difficult for anybody to try to comply with the confusing regulations that are coming out of this Environmental Protection Agency,? said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). ?To me, this is an economy-wide issue.?

?This is about jobs, billions of dollars, certainly in terms of the impact on lots of industries,? said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

Technically, that environmental provision is relevant to this debate because it was included in the payroll tax legislation passed by House Republicans, 229-193, in December. And Republicans also noted that the measure by itself passed with Democratic support, 275-142, back in October.

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