Top GOP leaders expect tax deal with Dems

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. Republican lawmakers on Sunday said they expect to work out a deal with Democrats to extend the payroll-tax cut before it expires at the end of February, but they offered no specifics on how they would pay for it.

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to resolve this fairly quickly,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said on ABC’s This Week television show.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have started negotiating a deal to extend unemployment benefits and a tax break for 160 million Americans beyond February.

If they fail, the payroll tax, which funds the federal Social Security retirement program, will revert to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent and leave workers with about $900 less in their wallets this year.

That could harm the country’s fragile economic recovery with some economists forecasting a cut in U.S. growth of up to 1 percent.

Most Republicans are eager to get the issue behind them after a bruising year-end battle, where they were in the awkward position of arguing against tax cuts.

“There is broad agreement on doing the payroll-tax holiday through the end of the year. ... The problem is paying for it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) on CNN’s State of the Union program.

“[Democrats] just don’t want to cut any spending. That is what made it problematic. But we will get it done. We will get it done before the end of February,” he said.

Disagreements over how to pay for the tax break hampered lawmakers’ efforts to extend it until the end of this year. Democrats had proposed a surtax on millionaires. Republicans had proposed cutting salaries and benefits for federal workers as well as raising premiums on wealthier recipients of the government health program Medicare.

In the end, lawmakers agreed to hike fees the government’s mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge lenders to guarantee new loans over a 10-year period.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll of registered voters found 56 percent favor replacing the entire 535-member Congress. Other polls have given Congress an approval rating between 11 percent and 13 percent; disapproval percentages range from 79 percent to 86 percent.

Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would let the Senate this week pass a bill barring members of Congress from using nonpublic data for own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information they could trade on.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said he’s working on an expanded bill that would go beyond stock transactions and ban lawmakers from making land deals and other investments based on what they learned as members of Congress.