WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Tom Price is ready to spend his holiday season legislating.
The question remains whether anyone other than House Republicans will join in.
House leaders named Price, a Republican from Roswell, to a conference committee for a disputed bill to extend a payroll tax cut and other measures on Tuesday, but Democrats are insisting on a two-month extension of several expiring policies before they will negotiate a full-year measure.
“The vast majority of people get very little time off during the holidays -- Christmas Day, maybe the day after,” Price told Channel 2 Action News. “It's time for us to do our job."
House Republicans on Tuesday rejected a two-month compromise reached by the Senate. Georgia House members fell in with their colleagues along party lines.
The policies expiring at year's end affect nearly every American: a tax cut for workers that would save the average Georgian $1,000 next year, long-term benefits for those out of work and physician payments that would prevent many doctors from dropping seniors on Medicare.
U.S. Rep. David Scott, an Atlanta Democrat, called the GOP gambit “irresponsible” and “shameful” for forcing more brinkmanship after the Senate adjourned for the year. He urged Congress to return in January to “do the full year without all of these shenanigans going on.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall of Lawrenceville said “shenanigans” is the wrong word, that Republicans were on the side of true compromise.
“We get the best results around here when we eschew take-it-or-leave-it politics,” Woodall said.
The biggest hurdle for negotiators will be how to pay for the spending and a pair of measures that irk environmentalists: forcing a swift decision on the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada and rolling back regulations on industrial boilers.
“It would be hard to support it [without those two pieces], but we would like to see the overall bill,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County. The pipeline and boiler measures would create jobs, he said.
Both of Georgia’s senators, Republicans Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, backed the two-month deal but said in statements that they are ready to return for a conference.
"When the Senate voted on this issue, the policy of extending tax cuts appeared to be the best deal to give a path to certainty to Americans,” Chambliss said. “Now, we have the opportunity to put the U.S. on a path to greater certainty both with the issue of payroll tax cuts and the Keystone pipeline."
Many Republicans said a two-month extension would lead to another showdown at the end of February.
But U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Marietta Republican, was confident a new compromise will be reached.
Said Gingrey: “Neither side wants to get beat over the head with the political rhetoric.”
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