Payroll Tax

The mood of the NHL labor talks changes faster than the November weather. A week ago, optimism was prevalent, fueled by a sunny high centered over Buffalo, where the NHL Players Association made a proposal it considered a significant step toward ending the dispute. Earlier this week, pessimism grew, under the influence of a low sweeping down from Toronto, where the NHL general managers met and disparaged what the players had offered, while offering a bleak prognosis for the delayed season.

WASHINGTON - House-Senate talks on renewing a payroll tax cut that delivers about $20 a week to the average worker yielded a tentative agreement Tuesday, with lawmakers planning to unveil the pact Wednesday and sending the measure to President Obama as early as this week. Under the outlines of the emerging agreement, a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax would be extended through the end of the year, with the nearly $100 billion cost added to the deficit.

WASHINGTON - Americans are getting an election-year tax present. Congress voted with rare speed and cooperation Friday to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut for 160 million workers and to renew unemployment benefits for millions more who haven't seen a paycheck in six months. With lawmakers' ratings in the gutter, the legislation sped through both the House and Senate and was on its way to President Obama, who saluted the quick passage. Taxpayers have grown accustomed to the 2 percentage point cut in the payroll tax over the past year - around $80 a month for someone earning $50,000 a year - and the reduction now will be continued.

WASHINGTON - In an about-face, House GOP leaders said Monday they were willing to extend the 2 percentage-point cut in the payroll tax through the end of the year and add the $100 billion cost to the nation's $15 trillion-plus debt. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), and GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California said the House could vote on the payroll tax measure this week. But they said the fate of unemployment benefits for millions of long-term jobless and efforts to forestall scheduled cuts in fees to doctors who treat Medicare patients would remain in the hands of a House-Senate negotiating panel looking for ways to pay for them.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D., Texas), chairman of the Senate's powerful tax- writing committee, said yesterday that he is opposed to cutting the Social Security payroll tax - even if the retirement fund's surplus is being used to cover the federal deficit. "I refuse to support it because that kind of a loss of revenue would lead to some extremely serious problems," Bentsen told a group of reporters in his office. "There'd be an enormous increase in the deficit, and you would have foreigners beginning to question whether we could manage our economy.

New Jersey's health-care system needs major changes to control insurance costs and growing numbers of uninsured people, a panel appointed by Gov. Florio said yesterday. Completing a five-month study, the Commission on Health Care Costs listed more than 90 recommendations for eliminating duplicate facilities, encouraging the use of "wellness care" and creating no-frills insurance policies. The most controversial proposal is the panel's call for a payroll tax to support the state's Uncompensated Care Trust Fund, which pays the hospital bills of the uninsured.

WASHINGTON - Capitol Hill negotiators Thursday officially unveiled hard-fought compromise legislation to prevent 160 million workers from getting slapped with a payroll-tax increase, but it ran into turbulence in the Senate, where Republicans withheld support and several Democrats attacked it. The measure is a top election-year priority for President Obama and generally won backing from his Democratic allies in Congress, including Sen. Bob...

First it was to be a national sales tax of about 3 percent. That would have raised the billions of dollars President Clinton needed to expand health coverage to the uninsured. The opposition was quick. Liberals called the sales tax too heavy a burden on the poor. Conservatives said it was a dangerous new form of federal taxation that inevitably would be raised higher and higher. Now, with the sales tax dead, the White House is turning to a payroll tax, like the Social Security tax, paid by every business and every worker.

Speaking candidly to a group of business executives, White House health- care reform adviser Ira Magaziner said yesterday that an employer-worker payroll tax is a likely option to pay for coverage of uninsured Americans. "We need to bring everybody in, and we're looking to do that through an employer contribution system," Magaziner told the National Association of Manufacturers. Magaziner also called health-care reform "a nightmare politically" and predicted in stark terms that President Clinton's plan to control costs and guarantee coverage for all Americans will face tough going in Congress.

  The biggest change in Gov. Corbett's proposed education budget for the 2012-13 school year is his plan to use block grants to dole out a large portion of the state's public education payments to school districts. He proposes setting aside $6.5 billion for the grants, which would cover basic education funding - an all-purpose state subsidy to school districts - and state reimbursement programs for local Social Security payments and transportation costs. The grant program would make up more than 70 percent of the state's proposed $9.05 billion allocation for K-12 public education.

WASHINGTON - Congress on Friday overwhelmingly approved extending a payroll-tax cut for 160 million workers through the end of the year, probably the biggest accomplishment lawmakers will be able to savor in 2012. The rare bipartisan agreement, which also provides jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed and preserves Medicare payment rates to physicians, came without the hostility that has scarred economic debates since President Obama took office in January 2009. The House voted 293-132 to approve the plan.

WASHINGTON - Capitol Hill negotiators Thursday officially unveiled hard-fought compromise legislation to prevent 160 million workers from getting slapped with a payroll-tax increase, but it ran into turbulence in the Senate, where Republicans withheld support and several Democrats attacked it. The measure is a top election-year priority for President Obama and generally won backing from his Democratic allies in Congress, including Sen. Bob...

WASHINGTON - Anxious to avoid a bruising election-year fight, negotiators on Capitol Hill worked into Wednesday night ironing out final details of an agreement to extend a cut in the payroll taxes paid by most Americans. The legislation also would renew jobless benefits for millions more. The $150 billion measure taking shape represented a tactical retreat for Republicans, who were generally unenthusiastic about the legislation but eager to move beyond the issue. With campaign season starting, they don't want President Obama and Democrats in Congress to be able to claim the GOP was standing in the way of a middle-class tax cut. In a rare burst of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided Congress, lawmakers hoped to unveil the measure Wednesday night so it could be voted on Friday in the House and then quickly pass the Senate.

WASHINGTON - House-Senate talks on renewing a payroll tax cut that delivers about $20 a week to the average worker yielded a tentative agreement Tuesday, with lawmakers planning to unveil the pact Wednesday and sending the measure to President Obama as early as this week. Under the outlines of the emerging agreement, a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax would be extended through the end of the year, with the nearly $100 billion cost added to the deficit.

WASHINGTON - In an about-face, House GOP leaders said Monday they were willing to extend the 2 percentage-point cut in the payroll tax through the end of the year and add the $100 billion cost to the nation's $15 trillion-plus debt. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), and GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California said the House could vote on the payroll tax measure this week. But they said the fate of unemployment benefits for millions of long-term jobless and efforts to forestall scheduled cuts in fees to doctors who treat Medicare patients would remain in the hands of a House-Senate negotiating panel looking for ways to pay for them.

WASHINGTON - The White House is focusing on reelection themes such as jobs and public-works projects in President Obama's new budget blueprint while relying on familiar but never enacted tax increases on the wealthy and corporations to reduce future deficits after four years of trillion dollar-plus shortfalls. Obama's 2013 budget, set for release Monday, is the official start to an election-year budget battle with Republicans. It's unlikely to result in a genuine effort to address the $15 trillion national debt or the entrenched deficits that keep piling onto it. But it will serve as the Democrats' party-defining template on this year's election stakes.

Democrats pitch 6-week benefit cut WASHINGTON - House-Senate negotiations on extending jobless benefits and a 2 percentage-point cut in the payroll tax - both of which expire at the end of February - remained stalled Thursday, despite a proposal in which Democrats urged a six-week cut in the maximum time unemployed workers can receive jobless benefits. Democrats rejected efforts by House conservatives to require beneficiaries to enroll in GED classes or permit states to require drug tests as conditions of getting unemployment benefits.