'Sometimes our job is to turn chicken-sh— into chicken salad,' Boehner said. House GOP loads up year-end bill

A year-end push to extend the payroll tax holiday in the House is quickly morphing into a vehicle for a slew of policies that Republicans have been yearning to enact.

GOP leadership told its membership at a closed-door meeting Friday morning that it would couple with the expiring tax provisions an easing of environmental regulations on boilers, selling broadband spectrum and paving the way for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.


The environmental regulation legislation — known as Boiler MACT — has already been rolled back in the House.

Speaker John Boehner referred to the package he’s putting forward as turning “chicken-sh— into chicken salad,” according to people who attended the meeting in the Capitol basement.

Translation: He’s going to pass President Barack Obama’s preferred tax cut, but he wants some skin from Democrats for it.

The year-end bill will also include an extension of jobless benefits and a fix to the reimbursement rate for Medicare providers.

It’s a course change for Republicans, who are trying to blunt internal opposition to extending major Democratic policies by coupling them with measures they’ve been trying to get over the finish line.

Even if the Senate doesn’t accept these items to ride alongside the package, House Republican leaders will say they tried, and hope their membership goes along anyway.

The details are still being unveiled, but the spectrum auction is one of the measures Republicans plan to use to offset the cost of the pricey extensions. Republicans are framing the easing of Boiler MACT regulation and allowing the Keystone pipeline to go forward as “jobs” measures — in other words, it’s a way to help Republicans justify a ‘yes’ vote for the payroll tax holiday, which they fundamentally do not like.

Also offsetting the cost will be a slew of other items Obama submitted to the supercommittee earlier this year, in addition to changes to federal employee pension rules and a freeze on their pay. House Republicans, though, plan to freeze members of Congress’s pay in the package.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday called the newly unveiled GOP plan “evasive.”

“They’re taking a circuitous route to nowhere, and the fact is, we know what we have to do,” Pelosi said. “If we have to pay for the payroll tax cut, we’re perfectly willing to do that.”

Alternatively, Democrats have begun suggesting using money that is saved from the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq to offset the December expenditures. Publicly, Boehner has been opposed to such a tactic and it’s unlikely to pass the muster of House conservatives.

Unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday will be extended for one year, under the GOP plan, and the so-called “doc fix” for two years.

But still, it’s going to be a tough pill to swallow for many in the GOP. Republicans got a preview of the steep hill it’ll have to climb on Thursday night, when 26 of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) GOP colleagues voted against the party’s version of the payroll tax cut, despite assurances that the majority of his members would be on board.

At the closed-door meeting Friday, frustration was evident, sources said.

Asked if he thought Boehner’s leadership team misread the conference, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said, “Yeah, I do.”

“I just think they’re wrong,” he said, adding that the GOP should demand entitlement reform in exchange for extending the holiday, which is a top Obama priority.

Earlier, at a meeting with reporters, Boehner got vocal when asked whether Republicans were losing the messaging war on jobs.

“Well listen, I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, right? My dad owned a bar,” the Ohio Republican told reporters. “I know what’s going on out in America and the fact is that Republicans are trying to do everything we can to allow American families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn to try to get this government off the backs of employers so that they can begin to hire people.”

“The other side can come out with all the rhetoric they want to come out with, but the facts are the facts,” he added.

When asked whether the mass GOP defections in the Senate would make his job more difficult to wrestle support from his own House Republicans, Boehner simply replied: “Who knows?”