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The Hill: Conferee says voters backing GOP stance in payroll tax fight

 

Conferee says voters backing GOP stance in payroll tax fight

By Jonathan Easley 12/22/11 09:53 AM ET

Undeterred by calls from the conservative establishment to capitulate to Democrats in the payroll tax debate, Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) argued that the American people are on the side of House Republicans.

“We’re fighting here with a whole continent,” said the lawmaker, who has been appointed by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to a conference committee charged with negotiating a payroll tax holiday extension. “We represent the American people here and we represent common sense," she said on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" Thursday.

A growing number of Republican senators — many of whom face reelection in 2012 — are calling on House GOP leaders to vote on the bipartisan Senate-passed bill, which had the support of 89 senators, to extend the payroll tax holiday for two months.

In addition, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board on Wednesday wrote a scathing piece saying GOP leadership had “thoroughly botched” the payroll-tax fight, while former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove said Republicans had “lost the optics” in the message battle and called on them to fold.

Hayworth said Republicans will continue to fight no matter how much criticism they face from Democrats and the media because it’s what her constituents want.

“I’ve been talking with my constituents in the Hudson Valley of New York and I can tell you that yesterday one of them told me on radio that goes across Orange County, N.Y., that he’s with me, he’s with us,” Hayworth said. “He said it will be very difficult for payroll administrators and small businesses to manage a two-month extension — it just doesn’t make sense.”

Both sides agree that the payroll tax cut should be extended for all of 2012, but Republicans and Democrats differ on how it should be paid for. The Senate-passed bill, with its two-month extension, is meant as a stopgap to give the parties more time to negotiate how to pay for it.

 But Hayworth said “kicking the can down the road” is not what her constituents want.

"We’re getting positive messages from our district, and not just from that fellow citizen but from many others,” she said. “They want us to fight for them and that’s what we’re doing. We will get them the relief they need; we want it to be the greatest possible arrangement that we can make for them in very challenging times.”