House to vote on extension of payroll-tax reduction
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 13th, 2011 5:34 am by HL
House to vote on extension of payroll-tax reduction
In another test of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s leadership of his restive Republican majority, the House is expected to vote Tuesday on a GOP plan to extend a one-year reduction in the payroll taxes paid by 160 million workers.
Republicans have been divided over whether to extend the tax cut, as President Obama has urged, or allow the levy to revert to 6.2 percent in January from 4.2 percent.
Obama ambassadorial nominees: Eisen clears Senate, but Aponte is blocked
The Senate voted 70-16 Monday evening to break a Republican hold on the nomination of Norman Eisen to be ambassador to the Czech Republic and then approved him on voice vote.
But the White House and Senate Democrats failed to obtain the necessary 60 votes to break a GOP filibuster on the confirmation of Mari Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador.
The man behind the Ron Paul ads
Back in July, Republican ad man Jon Downs met with fellow veterans of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign at a local IHOP for their quarterly professional catch-up.
“He said, ‘Unbeknownst to you guys, I’ve been working and I’ve signed with Ron Paul,’ ” Scott Douglas, a Republican political operative and Downs’s first boss in politics, recalled. “And my mouth dropped.” Douglas said others in the breakfast crew “twitched and laughed” and “rolled their eyes.”
Humanizing Mitt: Romney tries to show softer side on campaign trail
MADISON, N.H. — Mitt Romney has a message for anyone who thinks he doesn’t understand ordinary people: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
And he’s been trying to show his everyman credentials on the campaign trail in the past few days. He’s been talking about living modestly as a missionary with a makeshift toilet he calls “a bucket affair” and about his years counseling people in his church when they were down on their luck, depressed or struggling to keep their marriages intact.
