Main Street

President to House Republicans: “Seriously?”

Update 3:55 p.m.: It looks like the House Republicans have bowed to overwhelming public pressure and agreed to the short-term extension.

—-

“Have we become so dysfunctional that even when we agree on things we can’t do it?” President Barack Obama asked today. It’s a good question.

We’re still not really close to an agreement on an extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut that will expire in ten days. The easy answer is for the House to pass the short-term extension passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the Senate—but the Tea Party radicals who keep Speaker John Boehner on a short leash are preventing that. The President is pushing hard to try and break the deadlock this week.

The consequences of failing to pass an extension? Millions of people cut off from the lifeline of unemployment insurance, and 160 million people facing a payroll tax hike. “”So many of these debates get reduced to which party is winning and which party is losing,” Obama said in a statement today, “but we should remind ourselves this is about the American people.”
p>

Obama said that more than 30,000 people have written in to explain what the end of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits would means to them. For working-class and middle-class families, those dollars represent heating oil, food, gas for your car to get you to and from work, or school supplies. For the economy as a whole, it’s fewer dollars that van flow to local businesses.

Today, Ohio Working America members rallied outside Speaker Boehner’s district office to demand an extension. That’s just one of the ways that voters are letting their representatives know that failure on this is not an option. (You can take part, too—click here to call your member of Congress.)

“This is exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington,” Obama said. He’s right. It’s time for Boehner to get it together and pass the Senate’s bipartisan compromise, and then get to work on an extension for the rest of 2012.

Tags: Barack Obama, Jobs, John Boehner, Payroll Tax Cut, Retirement, Tea Party, unemployment