WASHINGTON — Americans are getting an election-year tax present. Congress voted with rare speed and cooperation Friday to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut for 160 million workers and to renew unemployment benefits for millions more who haven’t seen a paycheck in six months.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When last seen in Washington, House Republicans were furious with their own leader, Speaker John Boehner, and angry with their Senate Republican brethren over how the showdown over the Social Security tax cut turned into a year-end political debacle.
President Obama was in Ohio this week, speaking in the Cleveland area about the state of the nation’s economy. He surprised reporters (and no doubt Congressional Republicans as well) when he announced that he was appointing former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the new federal consumer financial protection bureau.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barely beating Santa’s sleigh, Congress delivered a last-minute holiday tax-cut extension to 160 million American wage-earners on Friday, just when it looked like they and millions of unemployed workers were going to be left with coal in their stockings.
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday caved to demands by President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and fellow Republicans for a short-term renewal of payroll tax cuts for all workers. The breakthrough almost certainly spares workers an average $20 a week tax increase Jan. 1.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mitt Romney refused to be pinned down Wednesday on how Congress should break an impasse that threatens to raise taxes for 160 million workers — the latest pressing policy debate the Republican presidential hopeful has sidestepped. Rival Newt Gingrich, in contrast, castigated Congress for “an absurd dereliction of duty.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Careening toward a politically toxic tax hike, President Barack Obama implored House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday to get behind a two-month stopgap until a longer deal could be struck early next year, calling it the only real way out of a mess that is threatening the paychecks of 160 million workers and isolating House Republicans.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress lurched toward Grinch-like gridlock on Tuesday as the Republican-controlled House rejected a two-month extension of Social Security tax cuts that President Barack Obama said was “the only viable way” to prevent a drop in take-home pay for 160 million workers on Jan. 1.