Despite their December 31 deadline, House Republicans are still playing games (Jason Reed/Reuters)



Despite their December 31 deadline, House Republicans are still playing games (Jason Reed/Reuters)



Near as I can tell, House Republicans have spent the entire morning on the floor of the U.S. House whining that instead of passing a full year extension for the payroll tax cut, the Senate only passed a two-month temporary extension.

The problem, of course, is that the only reason the Senate didn't pass a full year extension is that House Republicans refused to pass it without adding in a bunch of poison pills, including cuts to unemployment benefits and raising Medicare premiums on higher income beneficiaries. The idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul was dead on arrival, so to buy more time to try to talk House Republicans off the ledge, the Senate passed a temporary extension of two months. It wasn't ideal, but given the House was refusing to pass a clean extension, it was their only option.

If House Republicans had ever been serious about passing the payroll tax cut extension, they'd have passed it for a full year, no strings attached. If they were serious about it now, they'd go ahead and pass the two-month extension and then announce their commitment to extending it beyond that for the full year. But they aren't doing either of those things. And by rejecting the two-month extension, they are following the one path that is guaranteed to raise taxes, even if only temporarily.

But it's not just that they are refusing to extend the payroll tax cut—it's that they are trying to do it in a way that avoids responsibility for their action. Instead of voting against the tax cut deal, they are requesting a "conference" committee for further negotiations. But the whole idea of the two-month extension is to allow negotiations to continue! It's just that the negotiations would continue without the threat of GOP hostage taking looming over the process.

House Republicans are having none of that. They want their hostage, and if they don't get to hold on to their hostage, they want to shoot it. Either they don't care what the American public wants, or they are completely oblivious to how their charade makes them look. Either way, they are doing everything in their powerful to demonstrate why Americans are right to loathe and detest Congress.