There are always two sides to the tax relief coin. Heads: slash taxes. Tails: find a way to pay for it.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the payroll tax cut needs to be extended, but can’t agree on how to fund it, and unless they start making concessions soon, it will expire.
Republicans want to pay for the tax cut by cutting spending elsewhere. Specifically, they want to freeze federal workers’ pay through 2015 and reduce the government bureaucracy to the tune of 200,000 jobs.
Democrats want to tax the rich. Specifically, they want to make deeper cuts to the payroll tax and pay for it by imposing a 3.25 percent surtax on income exceeding $1 million.
Both of these measures have been put to votes and both have been killed. Still we are being told that the payroll tax cut will likely be extended in one form or another before Congress breaks for Christmas.