As expected, the House quickly approved the two-month extension of the Payroll Tax Cut in a pro forma session this morning presided over by Speaker Boehner himself:

The House on Friday morning approved a bill extending the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance for two months, and also prevents a planned cut to reimbursements for Medicare physicians.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) asked for unanimous consent, which was declared approved by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The bill is H.R. 3765.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who tried unsuccessfully to force a vote on the Senate bill earlier in the week, spoke briefly before the bill was accepted to thank Republicans for finally agreeing to the extension.

“I know that the American people are pleased that we have come together to agree on this extension to give certainty and peace of mind to 160 million Americans who are concerned about losing their tax cut, the 48 million seniors who are concerned about their Medicare, and the 2.3 million people who are unemployed and seeking work who are fearful of losing their benefits,” Hoyer said.

“I thank the Speaker, and I thank the gentlelady from Missouri,” he said.

The quick House passage capped a disastrous public relations week for House Republican leaders, who initially signaled support for the two-month extension agreed to in the Senate, then changed their minds after rank-and-file members said they opposed what could be a complicated patch for employers.

For procedural reasons, the Senate needed to reapprove the bill before the House could vote, and that happened in a brief session before the House convened. The bill now goes to the President, who will likely sign it today before heading out of town for the holidays.

Of all the words that have been written about the totally predictable resolution of the Payroll Tax Cut debacle, nobody gets its more correct that Charles Krauthammer, who deftly points out the utter absurdity of the entire debacle:

To begin with, what even minimally rational government enacts payroll tax relief for just two months? As a matter of practicality alone, it makes no sense. The National Payroll Reporting Consortium, representing those who process paychecks, said of the two-month extension passed by the Senate just days before the new year: “There is insufficient lead time to accommodate the proposal,” because “many payroll systems are not likely to be able to make such a substantial programming change before January or even February,” thereby creating “substantial problems, confusion and costs.”

The final compromise appears to tweak this a bit to make it less onerous for small business. But what were they thinking in the first place? What business operates two months at a time? The minimal time horizon for business is the quarter — three months. What genius came up with two? U.S. businesses would have to budget for two-thirds of a one-quarter tax-holiday extension. As if this government has not already heaped enough regulatory impediments and mindless uncertainties upon business.

But making economic sense is not the point. The tax-holiday extension — presumably to be negotiated next year into a 12-month extension — is the perfect campaign ploy: an election-year bribe that has the additional virtue of seizing the tax issue for the Democrats.

(….)

The House Republicans’ initial rejection of this two-month extension was therefore correct on principle and on policy. But this was absolutely the wrong place, the wrong time, to plant the flag. Once Senate Republicans overwhelmingly backed the temporary extension, that part of the fight was lost. Opposing it became kamikaze politics.

Note the toll it is already taking on Republicans. For three decades Republicans owned the tax issue. Today, Obama leads by five points, a 12-point swing since just early October. Theop payroll tax ploy has even affected his overall approval rating, now up five points (in six weeks) to 49 percent.

The Democrats set a trap and the Republicans walked right into it. By rejecting an ostensibly bipartisan “compromise,” the Republican House was portrayed as obstructionist and, even worse, heartless — willing to raise taxes on the middle class while resolutely opposing any tax increases on the rich.

House Republicans compounded this debacle by begging the Senate to come back and renegotiate the issue, thus entirely conceding the initiative to Majority Leader Harry Reid. But Reid had little incentive to make any concessions. House Republicans would have taken the fall for 160 million shrunken paychecks. Every day the White House would have demanded, in the name of the suffering middle class, that Republicans return from vacation and pass the temporary extension.

Having finally realized they had trapped themselves, House Republicans quickly caved, with help from a fig leaf contrived by Sen. Mitch McConnell.

The GOP’s performance nicely reprises that scene in “Animal House” where the marching band turns into a blind alley and row after row of plumed morons plows into a brick wall, crumbling to the ground in an unceremonious heap.

On the left, of course, there is plenty of crowing. Steve Benen, Greg Sargent, and Eugene Robinson are all making one variation of the argument that the Republicans caved and let Obama and the Democrats walk out of this as the party that wanted to cut taxes, thus ceding ground not only for the 2012 elections but the budget battles that must still be fought before then. They’re absolutely right.

Even if you accept the argument that the GOP was right on the policy here, they were completely behind the curve on the politics of it. First, there were many House Republicans opposed to the very idea of extending the Payroll Tax Cut, arguing for example that there was little evidence that it was actually doing anything to stimulate the economy and that it was only causing further damage to the Social Security Trust Fund.  These aren’t invalid arguments, but when it comes from the same people arguing against raising taxes on the very wealthy, it is a complete political non-starter and another opportunity for the Obama Administration to further cast itself as the protector of the middle class. Then, when the House finally decided to go ahead and pass a Payroll Tax Cut, it ends up in the Senate where it runs up against the problem of how to pay for it. Thanks largely to a lack of time to resolve differences, the Senate ends up passing a short-term extension that also includes something important to the GOP, a requirement that the Administration make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline before the election. This deal was negotiated by Mitch McConnell, and everyone seemed to think that it had John Boehner’s at least tacit approval.

Once again, the Republicans in the House were right to criticize the idea of a two month extension. As I noted earlier this week,  payroll reporting companies are saying that it is going to cause them serious logistical problems, and even more problems for small businesses who handle their own payroll. What the House GOP refused to recognize, though, is that there simply wasn’t any way that a one-year deal was going to be concluded by the end of the year. It didn’t matter that they rejected the Senate bill. It didn’t matter that they appointed representatives for a House-Senate Conference Committee. The Senate was not coming back in session, and there’s nothing the House could have done about that. Once Mitch McConnell came out and basically sided with Harry Reid and Barack Obama over the House GOP, it was all over but the inevitable surrender. There was a proposal floating through the halls of Congress yesterday to extend the two-month extension to three months so that it would at least match up with the first quarter of the year, which is how most businesses calculate and pay their SSI taxes. If that proposal had been made on Sunday, maybe it would have had a chance, but it was too late. The GOP had lost a battle they never should have engaged in, and it was entirely their own fault.

Rick Moran sums it all up quite well:

Technically, Boehner is right. The scheme is indeed, unnecessarily complex and nearly unworkable.

But technicalities don’t mean squat when you’re in a political fight and you’re holding a pair of deuces while your opponent is flashing three queens. The Democrats, including the president, are following one of the oldest political maxims in history: Don’t get in the way when your opponent is in the process of destroying themselves.

It appears that the GOP is no longer a political party. Their members have bolted and decided to join the Hemlock Society.

Actually I think we saw that starting back in August when House Republicans were willing to take the nation to the brink of default because of their refusal to recognize the need to raise the debt ceiling. In that case, at least, they had the public on their side because, of course, raising the debt ceiling is always an unpopular move. This time, though, they shot themselves in the foot for no good reason at all. Instead of wasting a week on a fight they could not win, they should have just passed the two month extension, appointed conferees to meet with the Senate starting in January to get the one-year deal done, and gotten the heck out of down for the holidays. Instead, they hung on, bitterly clinging to a political point that nobody understood and nobody bothered to clearly explain. They lost, and they lost big. Whether they will realize that now or continue with their political ineptitude remains to be seen.

It looks as though the Payroll Tax Cut Debate is reaching its expected conclusion. At least two media outlests are reporting that Speaker Boehner has agreed to sign on to the two-month extension of the Payroll Tax Cut passed by the Senate, leaving the issue of the one year extension to be dealt with in January.

National Journal reports that “House Republicans Agree To Payroll Deal”

House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.

The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate’s two-month payroll-tax cut and the House’s one-year alternative.

The House will pass the two-month extension with a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension.

Talking Points Memo confirms the story, and CNN is reporting on the air the same deal and saying that Boehner will be holding a conference call with the GOP caucus at 5;00pm today. it’s possible that this could still go south, but it seems unlikely at this point. Once Mitch McConnell sided with Obama and Reid, the House GOP really had no choice.

Update: Speaker Boehner is about to hold a press conference, but his office released this statement shortly after 5:30pm:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today issued the following statement:

“Senator Reid and I have reached an agreement that will ensure taxes do not increase for working families on January 1 while ensuring that a complex new reporting burden is not unintentionally imposed on small business job creators.  Under the terms of our agreement, a new bill will be approved by the House that reflects the bipartisan agreement in the Senate along with new language that allows job creators to process and withhold payroll taxation under the same accounting structure that is currently in place.  The Senate will join the House in immediately appointing conferees, with instructions to reach agreement in the weeks ahead on a full-year payroll tax extension.  We will ask the House and Senate to approve this agreement by unanimous consent before Christmas.  I thank our Members – particularly those who have remained here in the Capitol with the holidays approaching – for their efforts to enact a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut for working families.”

And so, it is done.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out with a proposal today that appears to take both sides in the ongoing Payroll Tax Cut debate, but which pretty much undermines the House Republican position on the Payroll Tax Cut extension:

WASHINGTON—Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says the House and Senate should meet in Washington to extend the payroll tax set to expire Dec. 31.

With the clock ticking, McConnell says the House should pass a short-term extension that gives 160 million Americans certainty that their taxes will not rise Jan. 1. The Kentucky Republican also called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to convene negotiators on the longer-term extension that House Republicans are demanding.

Here’s the press release from McConnell’s office:

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell issued the following statement Thursday regarding a path forward on Keystone XL Pipeline jobs, extending unemployment insurance, the temporary payroll tax holiday and seniors’ access to medical care: “The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan bills to require the President to quickly make a decision on whether to support thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs through the Keystone XL pipeline, and to extend unemployment insurance, the temporary payroll tax cut and seniors’ access to medical care. There is no reason why Congress and the President cannot accomplish all of these things before the end of the year. House Republicans sensibly want greater certainty about the duration of these provisions, while Senate Democrats want more time to negotiate the terms. These goals are not mutually exclusive. We can and should do both. Working Americans have suffered enough from the President’s failed economic policies and shouldn’t face the uncertainty of a New Year’s Day tax hike. Leader Reid should appoint conferees on the long-term bill and the House should pass an extension that locks in the thousands of Keystone XL pipeline jobs, prevents any disruption in the payroll tax holiday or other expiring provisions, and allows Congress to work on a solution for the longer extensions.” ###

Leaving aside the necessarily partisan tone of the release, there really isn’t any substantive difference between what McConnell says here and the position that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have taken on this issue. Reid, after all, has said that he will not appoint conferees until the House acts on the two-month extension, and that is exactly what McConnell is calling on the House to do. Regardless of how you parse it, Mitch McConnell has just hunt John Boehner and the House GOP out to dry.

None of this is surprising, especially when you consider that McConnell and other Senate Republicans are reportedly now worried that this disaster could cause them to miss out on a chance to grab the Senate next year:

Senate Republicans are worried the standoff over extending the payroll tax holiday could hurt their chances of winning the upper chamber next year.

Senior Republican aides have made clear in private conversations that their bosses are not happy with how House Republicans have handled a bipartisan Senate compromise to extend tax relief for two months.

It’s not helping,” a veteran Senate Republican strategist said of the House GOP fight against the Senate package. “Senate Republicans are tired of paying the price for the lack of legislative thoughtfulness in the House.”

The political operative said incumbents such as Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) could pay the price.

These Republican senators have spoken out against House GOP colleagues. Others lawmakers on the ballot next year have urged House members to pass the payroll tax package to avert tax hikes in January.

These are well-founded concerns, of course, and it explains why you’ve seen several Republican Senators speak out against the House GOP’s actions, and, I would submit, why McConnell is taking this position now. There is no way for Republicans to win this battle politically and McConnell wants to cut the losses before it gets worse. I think Boehner probably feels the same way, his problem is that he doesn’t have nearly the same control over his caucus that McConnell does, which is likely the main reason for this entire debacle. A rational politician like Boehner would have taken the two-month extension (with the Keystone XL proviso) without even thinking, so would most of the long-serving Congressmen that Boehner counts as allies no doubt. The Tea Party Caucus, seemingly egged on by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who seems to have spent the last year working to undermine Boehner’s authority and power, are either so obsessed with hurting the President, or so ignorant of the damage they are causing themselves, that they are willing to act like kamikazes just as they did during the debt ceiling negotiations. It’s not a recipe for stable majority.

I noted yesterday that McConnell has pretty much been silent on this issue since the Senate passed its compromise extension. Now, he’s chosen to speak, and he has done so in a manner that pushes the House GOP further out on the gangplank. At this point, they’d do well to listen to him, pass the Senate bill on a voice vote, and get out of town for the Holidays before they end up damaging themselves further. In fact, with McConnell taking this position I don’t see how the House Republicans can maintain their position with any credibility. They are alone, adrift. They either blink, or they look like idiots.

The Wall Street Journal is out this morning with an absolutely blistering editorial about the manner in which the House GOP has mishandled the Payroll Tax Cut debate:

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

(…)

After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago, and the chances of Mr. McConnell becoming Majority Leader in 2013 are declining.

At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation. Wisconsin freshman Senator Ron Johnson has been floating a useful agenda for such a strategy. The alternative is more chaotic retreat and the return of all-Democratic rule.

House Republicans are increasingly been left out on their own in this debate. Over on the Senate side, Scott Brown, Dean Heller, Olympia Snowe and Richard Lugar, and Bob Corker have all said the that House should pass the Senate bill and then come back after the New Year and work out the terms needed to extended the cut for a full year.  Last night on CNN, John McCain warned the House GOP that they were hurting the Republican Party:

Perhaps most significant in all of this, though, is who we aren’t hearing from:

Speaker John Boehner stood before a band of fellow House Republicans on Tuesday and angrily demanded the Senate return to the Capitol and extend the payroll tax cut for a full year.

Left out of the photo op: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the co-architect of the Senate’s two-month tax cut extension. He reached an agreement that has become a throbbing political headache for Boehner and has remained unusually silent as the partisan rancor and gridlock cause a year-end embarrassment for Congress.

While the two men have been remarkably united this year, the year-end package has prompted an unusual amount of confusion, disunity, frustration and increased finger-pointing, both publicly and privately, between House Republicans and Senate Republicans over who is at fault in the political fiasco.

(…)

The rebellion among House Republicans against the Senate has put McConnell in an awkward position as well. He faces criticism from the GOP rank and file for cutting a deal they don’t like and fierce attacks from Senate Democrats for not voicing support for his own proposal. In the meantime, at least a half-dozen members from McConnell’s own conference are publicly voicing concern over the House GOP’s decision to block the Senate plan.

While McConnell has publicly backed Boehner through a spokesman on Sunday, he hasn’t engaged in the full-throated attacks on Democrats — or calls for the Senate to reconvene — that many in the House have. Instead, he’s quietly huddled back home in Louisville, including spending some time at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.

In other words, McConnell is currently content to let Boehner and the House GOP take the heat for this one, partly at least because he still sees the possibility of Senate gains in 2012 and doesn’t want to jeopardize them. You’ll notice, for example, that with the exception of McCain, all of the Senators who have spoken out against the House GOP’s actions are up for election in 2012. No doubt the Senate GOP Caucus feels that it has done its job here, they got an extension passed and included a provision requiring that a decision be made on the Keystone XL Pipeline before the 2012 election, something Republicans have been pushing for months. Additionally, McConnell might well be frustrated by Boehner’s inability to once again control his caucus, a problem that McConnell has never really had in the four years he has led the Senate Republican Caucus. If the House Republicans are going to get out of this mess, it’s not be because Mitch McConnell came to their rescue and suddenly opposed a bill he personally negotiated and that nearly every Republican in the Senate voted for.

Major Garrett posits five scenarios under which this standoff can resolve itself:

HOUSE GOP BLINKS: House Republicans see the futility of fighting President Obama the week before Christmas and agree to the Senate’s two-month payroll-tax cut extension on one condition: Senate Democrats agree to go to conference on a full, one-year payroll tax extension with spending cut offsets by Feb. 1. Senior House GOP aides would not say if this is under active consideration but would not rule it out. John Harwood of CNBC and The New York Times first reported this possibility. Probability: 50 percent.

IT ALL EXPIRES: The payroll-tax holiday expires on Jan. 1, as do jobless benefits for more than 2 million workers, while Medicare doctors see a 27 percent cut in their reimbursements. Public pressure and outrage galvanize quickly, prompting Congress to return in early January and cut a hurried deal to address all three issues. Probability: 30 percent.

MORE GIMMICKS: House Republicans and Senate Democrats fall prey to the temptation to use “savings” from the Overseas Contingency Operations (Iraq and Afghanistan war funding), built into the Congressional Budget Office baseline budget and offset the costs of a one-year payroll tax cut, jobless benefits, and blocking the Medicare reimbursement pay cut for doctors. Probability: 10 percent.

SENATE DEMOCRATS GIVE IN: House Republicans stick to their guns, stay in Washington in small numbers this week and next, hector Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid until he relents, appoints a conference committee, and enables negotiators to swiftly reach a compromise. Probability: 5 percent

HOUSE BACKS DOWN: House Republicans cave entirely and pass the Senate’s two-month payroll-tax cut extension next week. Probability: 5 percent.

I think Garrett has it about right. House Republicans are going to pull back from the brink, long before the President or Harry Reid give in, and they will go into the 2012 damaged politically because of an incredibly dumb political maneuver. The only other likely outcome is that the tax cut, and unemployment benefits, expire completely, in which case the GOP will suffer even more. The way out of this is rather obvious, whether they’ll see it is another question.

The ongoing standoff over the Payroll Tax Cut is presenting President Obama with a political dilemma regarding the Christmas holidays:

President Obama faces a most difficult decision with the payroll tax extension up in the air, and it isn’t whether to compromise with Republicans.

The toughest call for the president this holiday season may be whether to join his family for Christmas in Hawaii or stay in lonely Washington.

The White House won’t say whether the president is heading west for the holidays—or even if he’s making an abbreviated appearance.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that Obama “intends to stay and work with Congress to ensure that Americans don’t have their taxes go up.”

Even if there’s no ideal time for a presidential vacation, this one comes at a particularly inopportune time.  For weeks, Obama has insisted that lawmakers stay in town to pass the tax extension. Otherwise, as he said earlier this month, “we can all spend Christmas here together.”

Now, with the payroll tax extension compromise unsettled, and members of Congress already back at home, does Obama up and leave, too? Or will the president be forced to spend the holidays at an empty White House with the Yule Log on TV listening to Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas?”

“If he stays, he could be seen as the only adult in the room,” said Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida. “If he leaves, it could hurt him.”

The question of whether Obama would stay in Washington was posed to Carney a couple of times during Tuesday’s briefing at the White House.

“Are you saying there’s a scenario that’s possible, on December 25th, where the president wakes up and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is on, and he puts on his Christmas sweater in the White House, and he’s all alone and his family is in Hawaii?” Ed Henry, the senior White House correspondent for Fox News wondered.

“I’m reluctant to say where he’s going to be on which day because I don’t want to make this about him,” Carney responded after jokingly asking Henry if he’s available to spend time with the president on Christmas. “It is a very fluid situation. It’s hard to know what tomorrow is going to look like, what the next day is going to look like, as this saga continues.”

Of course, it’s entirely possible for POTUS to fly out to Hawaii at the end of the week, spend Christmas with his family, then fly back early next week. After all, it’s not like John Boehner and the House Republicans are going to be spending the weekend reciting Twas The Night Before Christmas on the House Floor while waiting up all night for Santa Claus to arrive. Of course, some would criticize the President for the cost of such a short trip to America’s 50th state, but really, only Scrooge would complain about a father wanting to spend Christmas with his family. Frankly, given the fact that the ball is in the House GOP’s court right now and they seem to be bungling this entire affair, I wouldn’t blame the President for just saying “Guys, I’m going on vacation, call me when you’re ready to talk, you know the number.” As I’ve said here numerous times, I find the political games that get played over Presidential recreational and vacation time to be mostly idiotic, so it frankly wouldn’t bother me.

Nonetheless, the political dilemma the White House is in is pretty clear. Right now, though, the President is winning the PR war here and I’m not sure where he spends Christmas is really going to matter to most people.

Ed Morrissey asks this question in the wake of the House’s rejection of the Senate’s Payroll Tax Cut extension:

I have a question — do Republicans on Capitol Hill bother to talk to one another?  If this package was so objectionable, why didn’t Boehner work with Mitch McConnell to force the demanded compromise in the Senate?  Only ten Senators voted against this bill, which means that the overwhelming majority of the Republican caucus gave it the thumbs-up.  Under those conditions, Reid’s anger is entirely legitimate.  He and McConnell worked out a compromise in which Republicans got the pipeline in exchange for a short-term extension that will get Congress through the holidays, but allows the GOP to push for more in later negotiations. Bear in mind that both parties have taken the same approach on budgeting matters — as they did last year in that bout of brinksmanship.

On principle, I’ve got to say that the argument for a one year extension is far superior to yet another temporary stop-gap measure, which seems to be all that Congress is inclined to do these days. Even President Obama admits that given that he has spent the last several months saying that only a one-year extension of the tax cut and unemployment benefits would be acceptable. The House passed a one-year extension last week, but when it got to the Senate it got bogged down in the murky question of how to allocate the “Pay fors” that would cover the reduced revenue to Social Security that would have to be covered by the Federal Government’s general revenues. So, we ended up with the two month extension and the requirement that the Executive Branch make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline in 60 days, rather than punting it out to after the election as the President so obviously preferred to do.

Ideally, it would be preferable to extend the tax cut, if it is going to be extended at all, for a year rather than kicking the can down the road to the end of February and guaranteeing that this fight will resume again in mid-January. For one thing, we’ve seen more than once that delaying final resolution of these disputed matters just leads to another round of brinksmanship disguised as negotiations. Why anyone thinks it will be easier to resolve this in February than December is beyond me. For another, as I noted this morning, the Senate’s two-month extension seems likely to pose significant logistical difficulties for businesses and payroll processing companies. So, in some sense, the argument for one year vs. two moths seems like a no-brainer. But, of course, this is Washington where pretty much everything that does gone done rarely involves use of very much brain matter.

Ed continues:

If the House thinks holding this up after getting overwhelming bipartisan approval in the Senate will win them political brownie points, they’d better take another look at the polls.  Obama is moving up incrementally on questions of protecting the middle class, and the GOP now wants to give him the position of fighting for a tax cut that Republicans don’t oppose, but won’t approve, either.  If they want to fight for principle in opposing the payroll tax holiday, then this makes sense.  If they want to fight to make it permanent so that its limited ability to impact long-term business and budget planning, then it would also make sense.  But blowing up a compromise simply because they object to a shorter-term gimmick over a slightly longer-term gimmick is fundamentally unserious.

At the very least, it seems like that House Republicans have done a horrible job of communicating exactly what it is they want here. Some, like Jeff Flake from Arizona, have taken the position that the tax cut should not be extended at all, which can at least be respected as a policy position. The House GOP Leadership, though, keeps saying that they want to extend the Payroll Tax Cut, because they know that politically they really don’t have any other choice in the matter. With the Senate having passed a bill that does just that, albeit on a temporary basis, they have not given anything approaching a good explanation for why they would oppose it under circumstances that make it more likely than not that there will be no extension (and no requirement for the President to make a decision on Keystone XL) at all. At this point, if the tax cut does not get extended, then it will be the GOP that gets blamed for it. Politically, that’s just about the dumbest move you can make right before Christmas on the eve of a Presidential election.

Unless the House GOP can find a way out of this, I don’t see it ending well for them, largely because it plays right into President Obama’s hands:

The fraying of a deal to extend payroll-tax cuts and unemployment benefits gives President Obama a golden opportunity to tar House Republicans as the source of Washington’s dysfunction while championing a popular issue.

But the renewed gridlock could still backfire on Obama, who risks being wounded yet again by congressional inaction as he ramps up his reelection bid. Republican opponents on the campaign trail are already blaming him for the mess.

“It’s incredibly tricky ground,” said Lanae Erickson, deputy director of the Social Policy and Politics Program of the centrist Democratic group Third Way. But “there is an opportunity to capitalize on this and hang it around necks of Republicans,” she said. “I think the American people’s patience is wearing thin with the tea party, and they’re really tired of government being held hostage by them. This is just going to be another nail in that coffin.”

It also tends to reinforce the general public attitude about Congress, which was reflected against today in a Gallup poll showing  it’s approval rating to be at another record low of 11%. With nonsense like this going on, it’s no wonder the public is frustrated. How, if it all, that will manifest itself in 2012 remains to be seen, but the House GOP seems to be playing with fire here.

Photo via Associated Press

With no great surprise, the House of Representatives has formally rejected the Senate bill that would extend the Payroll Tax cut for two months:

With a tax hike looming for 160 million Americans on New Year’s Day, House Republicans rejected a Senate plan to extend the payroll tax holiday for two months and instead called for a conference committee to hammer out the differences between the House and Senate.

The 229-193 partisan vote capped a wild few days of legislating and sends a message that Congress has chosen partisan stalemate over finding a quick solution before taxes go up and unemployment benefits go away for millions.

House Republicans, who were taken aback by the overwhelmingly bipartisan 89-10 Senate vote on the two-month extension, are trying to force the Senate to convene an old fashioned conference committee and somehow forge agreement on a full one-year extension of the payroll tax cut. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he will not re-start negotiations until the House passes a two-month extension.

So now Congress stands where it has at several other critical moments this year when the government was in crisis — stuck in absolute gridlock while the American people turn on them with record disapproval ratings. At this point, one side will have to cave in, or both sides will have to start spinning who’s responsible for a tax increase that could take $1,500 a year out of the average American family’s paycheck.

The Senate is not in session, and the House may close up shop “subject to the call of the chair” — meaning they could quickly call the chamber back into session if there’s a deal.

Later today, the House will vote on the GOP plan in a procedural manner that will set up the process to appoint members to a Conference Committee with the Senate. However, Harry Reid has already said the Senate will not be reconvening and Nancy Pelosi said she would not name any Democratic members to the House membership of the proposed committee, which seems a rather dumb move actually. Then, we wait and see who blinks next. And, yes, as always happens in these down-to-the-brink showdowns, someone will blink.

The trade association representing companies that process payrolls for American businesses are telling Congress that the Senate’s two-month payroll tax cut extension may be impossible for them to implement correctly:

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly.

Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”

ABC News obtained a copy of the letter, which can be read HERE. Isberg agreed that it would be fair to characterize his letter as saying that the two-month payroll tax holiday cannot be implemented properly.

The NPRC is a non-profit trade association that does not take positions on policy. The group represents organizations that provide payroll processing and services to more than 1.5 million employers, impacting one third of the private sector.

“We’re neutral and we’d be happy to do the work,” Isberg told ABC News.

“The concern is really for those who don’t use a payroll service provider,” he said. Americans will have different outcomes, he said, causing confusion “because they’ll have different outcomes. Some will have it done on time, some won’t, some will have adjustment notices later in the year.”

From the letter [PDF]:

Accordingly, NPRC advises policymakers that we believe there is insufficient lead time to accommodate the proposal embodied in H.R. 3630. In our opinion enactment of HR 3630 as written could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.

The difficulty is in establishing a new Social Security Taxable Wage limit of $18,350 for the two month extension period. More than ten percent of the workforce1 is likely to meet that limit, and would be subject to the higher 6.2% tax rate for earnings over that amount. However, many payroll systems are not likely to be able to make such a substantial programming change before January or even February. The systems affected tend to be highly complex, normally requiring at least ninety days for a change of this magnitude for software testing alone; not to mention analysis, design, coding and implementation.

The association recommends a  number of policy changes to the bill, all of which would require House and Senate action to implement. The NPRC was joined late yesterday by another trade association, the National Association of Wholesale-Distributors, which sent its own letter [PDF].

Leaving aside the policy questions dividing the House and Senate regarding whether this tax cut should be extended for two months or a full year, these implementation issues strike me as a serious concern, especially for small and mid-size businesses, which typically do payroll in-house rather than relying on outside firms. Unless this is fixed before December 31st, we could be looking at somewhat of an accounting nightmare come January.

Yesterday’s announcement by House Speaker John Boehner that the House GOP would not support the two-month extension of the Payroll Tax cut passed by the Senate has thrown Congress into chaos:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid on Monday rejected a demand from House Speaker John A. Boehner to reopen negotiations on a measure to extend a payroll tax cut, setting the Democratic-majority Senate on a collision course with the Republican-controlled House as a year-end deadline approaches.

With a deadlock over the measure looming, Reid (D-Nev.) warned that millions of Americans could see their taxes rise by $1,000 next year because of what he called the “intransigence” of GOP House members. Democrats also sought Monday to ramp up pressure on GOP lawmakers by launching robocalls in 20 districts across the country.

The White House, meanwhile, urged House Republicans to “do the right thing” and pass the bill already approved by nearly 90 percent of senators, including 83 percent of the chamber’s Republicans.

Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday morning that the House is poised to defeat the Senate-passed bill to extend the payroll tax cut for two months because the measure “creates uncertainty” for the U.S. economy. Instead, he said the House would send the bill to a bicameral conference committee. Boehner on Sunday began retreating from his previous support for the package because of opposition from conservative Republicans.

“I expect that the House will disagree with the Senate amendment and instead vote to formally go to conference,” Boehner said at news conference as House members were returning to Capitol Hill from a weekend recess.

Two hours later, Reid hit back, saying that negotiations were over. He said the House has two options: Accept the bipartisan compromise he worked out with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or allow taxes to rise next month.

“Senator McConnell and I negotiated a compromise at Speaker Boehner’s request,” Reid said. “I will not reopen negotiations until the House follows through and passes this agreement that was negotiated by Republican leaders and supported by 90 percent of the Senate.”

He said negotiations for extending the tax cut for a full year should continue in January. But, for now, Reid said, both chambers should adopt the two-month deal.

“My House colleagues should be clear on what their vote means today,” he said. “If Republicans vote down the bipartisan compromise negotiated by Republican and Democratic leaders, and passed by 89 senators including 39 Republicans, their intransigence will mean that in 10 days, 160 million middle-class Americans will see a tax increase, over 2 million Americans will begin losing their unemployment benefits, and millions of senior citizens on Medicare could find it harder to receive treatment from physicians.”

Reid said Boehner “should not walk away from” the negotiated compromise, “putting middle-class families at risk of a thousand-dollar tax hike just because a few angry Tea Partiers raised their voices to the speaker.”

In a White House news briefing, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that Boehner had urged fellow House Republicans to support the Senate measure. “So he was for it before he was against it,” Carney said.

It would only take 26 Republican House members to split away and vote yes, along with all the Democrats in the House, for the deal to pass, but it’s unclear if that could happen. The House GOP caucus has displayed rather remarkable unity on these issues this year. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are already starting to break away from their House colleagues:

Senate Republicans have started bailing on their House counterparts, criticizing the House GOP majority over a plan to reject a Senate-passed payroll tax cut extension.

At least four GOP senators had expressed displeasure with the House by mid-afternoon, as they feared House intransigence would lead to a politically and financially painful 2 percent increase in workers’ Social Security taxes on Jan. 1.

But with just hours to go before the pivotal vote, House leaders remained confident that the rank-and-file would stand strong against the Senate’s two-month extension. The flurry of activity exposed House Republicans to political isolation, with the president, House and Senate Democrats, and even a handful of Senate Republicans laying the groundwork to blame them if taxes go up on 160 million Americans.

After such a bitter year on Capitol Hill, it only seems appropriate that this latest must-pass bill would have yet another partisan twist, confirming the widespread sense of dysfunction that has become the dominant theme of this Congress.

Indeed it is. Yesterday, I noted that Boehner had point when he said that a full year extension is better than a two month extension. That remains true, but at this point they don’t have a choice between a two month extension and no extension at all. And who, exactly, do the Republicans think will get blamed for that one?

Apparently unable to reach a long term agreement, the Senate today passed an extension of the payroll tax cut that does nothing but kick this issue down the road about 45 days at the most:

The Senate on Saturday morning approved a two-month extension of a payroll tax break and jobless benefits, easily passing a year-end legislative package that also forces President Barack Obama to make a controversial decision on a major oil pipeline in the thick of his reelection campaign.

By an 89-10 vote, senators approved the plan as part of a final round of action that will conclude an acrimonious year of legislating in the divided Congress. Seven Republicans, one independent and two Democrats voted against the plan. The House is expected to take up the proposal in the coming days, where some top Republicans have voiced concern about a short-term extension.

The vote came moments after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) conceded that senators did not have an official cost estimate of the plan, an admission that served to underscore the frantic nature of the talks and the much-criticized legislative process employed by this Congress. The Congressional Budget Office later said it would reduce the deficit by $3 billion over the next decade.

Extending the 4.2 percent payroll tax holiday is one of Obama’s top priorities because it would ensure many families don’t pay on average an extra $1,000 a year in taxes next year. The proposal also would avert a scheduled 27 percent pay decrease for physicians serving Medicare patients, extend jobless benefits for millions of Americans and a welfare program. They will be paid for by new fees on the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday would cost the government $20.4 billion in lost revenue; unemployment benefits costs $8.3 billion; and the so-called “doc fix” costs $4.1 billion. The new Fannie and Freddie fees cut the deficit by $35.7 billion.

The provisions are slated to expire on Feb. 29, ensuring that Congress will fight again over these programs after it returns from its scheduled holiday recess.

“Getting two months is a lot better than zero which is what some people in here wanted,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), gesturing at the Senate chamber.

Not everyone was happy.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted against the plan, said he was “furious and disgusted” at the two-month extension, saying the Social Security trust fund shouldn’t be used to pay for the break and that punting a problem for another two months is emblematic of Washington’s inability to solve tough problems.

“I think we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, and we don’t have any money to pay Peter back,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). “And that bothers me a lot.”

Manchin and others have a point about the fiscal stupidity of continuing to cut the FICA tax pretending that it’s economically stimulative (there really hasn’t been a lot of evidence that it has been over the past year), but politically both parties were backed into a corner here. Not extending this tax cut, and the unemployment benefits, right before Christmas would have looked bad. Of course, extending this out to the end of February doesn’t really accomplish anything other than guarantee we’ll go through this debate again in a month and half or so, but does anyone really doubt that they won’t extend this tax cut in an election year?

A Washington Post-Bloomberg special report offers an alarming assessment of Social Security. Liberal economists argue that it’s bunk.

Under the headline “The debt fallout: How Social Security went ‘cash negative’ earlier than expected,” Lori Montgomery explains:

Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went “cash negative.”

For most of its 75-year history, the program had paid its own way through a dedicated stream of payroll taxes, even generating huge surpluses for the past two decades. But in 2010, under the strain of a recession that caused tax revenue to plummet, the cost of benefits outstripped tax collections for the first time since the early 1980s.

Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation’s budget problems, according to projections by system trustees. Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require an additional $105 billion. If the payroll tax break is expanded next year, as President Obama has proposed, Social Security will need an extra $267 billion to pay promised benefits.

The story comes with this handy dandy graphic:

The facts here are not in dispute. But the interpretation most certainly is.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research is incensed that WaPo would run “a lead front page story that would have been excluded from most opinion pages because of all the inaccuracies it contained.”

The basic premise of the story, as expressed in the headline (“the debt fallout: how Social Security went ‘cash negative’ earlier than expected”) and the first paragraph (“Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went ‘cash negative.’”) is that Social Security faces some sort of crisis because it is paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. [The "runaway national debt" is also a Washington Post invention. The deficits have soared in recent years because of the economic downturn following the collapse of the housing bubble. No responsible newspaper would discuss this as problem of the budget as opposed to a problem with a horribly underemployed economy.]

This “treacherous milestone” is entirely the Post’s invention, it has absolutely nothing to do with the law that governs Social Security benefit payments. Under the law, as long as their is money in the trust fund, then Social Security is able to pay full benefits. There is literally no other possible interpretation of the law.

As the article notes the trust fund currently holds $2.6 trillion in government bonds, so it is nowhere close to being unable to pay benefits. The whole point of building up the trust fund was to help cover costs at a future date when taxes would not be sufficient to cover full benefits. Rather than posing any sort of crisis, this is exactly what had been planned when Congress last made major changes to the program in 1983 based on the recommendations of the Greenspan commission.

This had me scratching my head. The “trust fund” consists of money that the federal government owes itself! Baker thinks this a minor point:

The article makes great efforts to confuse readers about the status of the trust fund. It tells readers:

“The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing.”

This is the same situation the the government faces when Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson or any other holder of government bonds decides to cash in their bonds when they become due. In such cases it “must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors.” The Post’s reporters and editors should understand this fact.

The article then goes on to incorrectly accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of misrepresenting the finances of Social Security:

“In an MSNBC interview, he [Senator Reid] added: ‘Social Security does not add a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has and, for the next 30 years, it won’t do that.’

This strikes me as tantamount to treating accounting as a religion. Just because there’s money on the books doesn’t mean it actually exists. But Paul Krugman makes the argument in a more persuasive manner:

Social Security is a program that is part of the federal budget, but is by law supported by a dedicated source of revenue. This means that there are two ways to look at the program’s finances: in legal terms, or as part of the broader budget picture.

In legal terms, the program is funded not just by today’s payroll taxes, but by accumulated past surpluses — the trust fund. If there’s a year when payroll receipts fall short of benefits, but there are still trillions of dollars in the trust fund, what happens is, precisely, nothing — the program has the funds it needs to operate, without need for any Congressional action.

Alternatively, you can think about Social Security as just part of the federal budget. But in that case, it’s just part of the federal budget; it doesn’t have either surpluses or deficits, no more than the defense budget.

Both views are valid, depending on what questions you’re trying to answer.

What you can’t do is insist that the trust fund is meaningless, because SS is just part of the budget, then claim that some crisis arises when receipts fall short of payments, because SS is a standalone program.

This is actually a fair point. I’m further persuaded by the validity of that way of looking at it by this addendum to Baker’s post:

In a comment below, Art Dover calls my attention to another inaccuracy in the article. It asserts: “The payroll tax holiday is depriving the system of revenue.” This is not true. Under the law, Social Security is 100 percent reimbursed from general revenue for the taxes that were lost as a result of the payroll tax holiday. This is yet another fabrication by the Post in its crusade to cut Social Security.

#facepalm. Had he said, “The ‘shortfall crisis’ is largely a creation of the payroll tax holiday, which is a temporary stimulus measure,” it would been a pretty powerful argument that we’re not really in a crisis. Or, at least, that the “crisis” was a function of a historic downturn in the global economy rather than a structural problem with Social Security. But to claim that not taking money out of people’s paychecks to pay for Social Security doesn’t yield a shortage for Social Security because we’re moving money that we don’t have in the Treasury into a fictional pile of money called a “trust fund” is just crazy talk.

Since I don’t believe IOUs written to oneself constitute real money but do think that IOUs written to other people constitute real financial obligations, I must conclude that Social Security is just a part of the budget. By extension, FICA taxes are just taxes, since they go into the same pot as every other Federal Government program. Which means that Social Security isn’t in crisis any more than the Defense Department, the Marine Mammal Commission, or Radio Free Europe.

Under that analytic framework, all that matters is that we’ve got a massive federal debt and no real good options for dealing with it. Some combination of the following are required: Social Security, Medicare, Defense, and other big ticket items have to be cut; taxes have to be increased; or growth to the overall economy needs to happen. And these are somewhat interactive options: drastic cuts in spending or drastic increases in taxes may hinder growth.

But the bottom line is that Social Security isn’t in crisis. Rather, we’re spending more money than we’re taking in across the board and have to deal with it.

Just because Social Security is really no more than an item in the federal budget doesn’t mean it can’t be viewed individually. There’s some utility in the accounting fiction of a trust fund and separate outlay streams simply from a management and forecasting standpoint. Given that it’s such a massive part of the budget, it makes sense to talk about it as if it were a self-funded program in order to rationalize it.  Knowing that our obligations are going to go up given present trends, we need to talk about such possibilities as slowly raising the retirement age, means testing benefits, raising the ceiling on payroll taxes–or even simply doing away with FICA altogether and just raising the income tax rate slightly. For that matter, we may conclude that these things are too high a price to pay and that we should consider changes in our immigration policy to bring in more young taxpayers and change the curve altogether.

It may be resonating with some elements of the Tea Party movement, but Rick Perry’s rhetoric has Florida Republicans concerned:

ORLANDO -Florida Republicans want the GOP presidential field to tread lightly on the subjects of Social Security and Medicare. Very, very lightly.

Even in senior-heavy Florida, there is a willingness this cycle to talk about finally reforming entitlement programs. But there are also growing worries about the way that debate is taking shape in the 2012 elections-and fears it could have devastating consequences for Republicans in a battleground state where roughly one in five residents are over age 65.

More than the state’s 29 electoral votes are at stake: There’s also a U.S. Senate seat and a handful of House districts that could determine the balance of power at every level of Washington.

“There is a way to talk about Social Security reform without scaring seniors and while demonstrating to younger workers that you’re going to have a modern system that’s going to be there for them,” said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. “We haven’t heard it yet.”

Putnam, a former Republican congressman, expressed concern about Rick Perry’s criticism about the creation of Social Security in his book. He also mentioned Florida straw poll winner Herman Cain’s repeated references to switching over to the “Chilean model” of entitlement programs.

“Claiming that Social Security is unconstitutional is a way bigger problem than saying it’s a Ponzi scheme,” Putnam said. “And I don’t think the average American aspires to the Chilean standard of living.”

(…)

Adam Hasner, a former Florida House majority leader who is also challenging Nelson, said neither of his party’s top presidential candidates had struck the right chord on entitlements – or offered the kind of policy solutions that would give voters faith in the GOP.

“They’re both right and they’re both wrong,” Hasner said of Perry and Romney. “Can you get people’s attention to show them that something’s wrong by calling [Social Security] a Ponzi scheme? Yes, but then you have to share with them what your answer is.”

As I’ve said before, that was Perry’s biggest mistake at the beginning. Rather than doubling down on the “Ponzi Scheme” and “unconstitutional” rhetoric, he should have been talking about what his solutions to the problem were. You don’t have to get into a policy paper length discussion, but you do at least need to have some kind of a broad outline. Otherwise, it’s very easy for your opponents to just paint you as a bomb thrower, which is exactly what has happened.

Rick Perry is the Republican frontrunner largely because he holds views that are widely supported within the party. Those same views could pose a real problem for him in the General Election, though:

In a hypothetical general election matchup, Perry trails President Barack Obama among the poll’s entire sample, 49 percent to 40 percent, about twice the deficit for Romney. Perry also confronts negative reactions from Americans disinclined to vote for a candidate expressing the skepticism he has about the viability of Social Security, evolution science and whether humans contribute to climate change.

“Science is an integral part of our culture,” said Danyelle Lowers, 27, a student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, who considers herself an independent voter. “To have such a general disregard for the sciences is rather terrifying.”

(…)

The most publicized campaign issue focusing on Perry — his characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme” — has Americans divided. Among all respondents, 46 percent said they agree with the remark, while 50 percent said they disagree.

Among Republicans, 65 percent agree with Perry’s statements about Social Security, while 33 percent disagree. Independents are nearly equally split.

(…)

Forty-five percent of Americans say they’d be less inclined to support a candidate who says science isn’t settled on whether human activity contributes to global warming, while 25 percent said it would make them more likely to back that candidate. Half said they would be turned off by a candidate who says evolution remains an unproven theory, with 20 percent saying they’d be more inclined to support someone who holds that view.

Interestingly, the poll also shows what could be slippage in the GOP horserace by Perry, perhaps due to the comments that have come out over the past two weeks of debating:

The results are similar in a new Gallup poll:

Texas Gov. and presidential candidate Rick Perry’s comments on Social Security, which include calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” appear to be a non-issue for most Republicans. However, they could cost him support with independents should he ultimately win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. As many Republicans say they are more likely to vote for Perry for president because of his views on Social Security as say they are less likely — 19% each. Among independents, 12% are more likely to vote for him and 32% less likely.

Perry’s statements on Social Security are more likely to harm his campaign indirectly by weakening his perceived viability than they are to turn off Republicans who disagree with his views. In contrast to the 19% of Republicans who say they would personally be less likely to support Perry over his Social Security views, 37% believe those views would hurt his chances of being elected president if he were the GOP nominee. Just 17% say they will help his chances.

Independents tilt even more strongly toward perceiving the issue hurts rather than helps Perry’s electability, 40% vs. 11%.

The 2012 General Election is going to be a battle for the independent voters. As I noted yesterday, President Obama is having trouble with those voters in battleground states, thus giving the GOP an opening to take back many of of the states they lost in 2008. A Republican nominee like Perry, though. may just be what sends the independents back into Obama’s fold.

It’s only one poll, and conservatives will dismiss it because it comes from a “Democratic” polling firm (although I’d note that said firm had a higher accuracy rate in 2010 than many media polls, and far higher than Rasmussen). However, Public Policy Polling is out with a new poll that shows the first signs that Rick Perry’s position on Social Security may be hurting him in the polls:

Americans strongly disagree with the statements Rick Perry made about Social Security in last week’s Republican Presidential debate, and Barack Obama has nearly doubled his lead over Perry nationally in the span of just 3 weeks.

Only 20% of voters agree with Perry that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme to 70% who dissent from that statement.  Democrats (4/87) and independents (20/69) are pretty universal in their disagreement with Perry and even Republicans (39/49) don’t stand with him on this one. When it comes to the possibility of actually ending Social Security voters are even more unanimous- 82% oppose taking that step to only 10% who would be supportive of it.  If Perry ends up as the Republican nominee and Democrats can effectively convince the electorate that he does want to end Social Security it could be an extremely damaging issue for him.

In fact it appears that Perry’s rhetoric on Social Security could already be causing him problems.  When PPP did a national poll three weeks ago Barack Obama led Perry by only 6 points at 49-43.  Now that gap has widened to 11 points at 52-41.  The main movement has come with Democratic voters.  On the previous poll Obama had only a 68 point lead with the party base at 81-13 but now it’s 80 points at 89-9.  We know there are a lot of Democratic voters disenchanted with Obama right now but if the GOP puts forward someone like Perry who’s willing to go after one of the Holy Grails of the party’s orthodoxy like Social Security it might scare those voters back into the fold.

In addition to his horse race numbers taking a wrong turn Perry’s favorability numbers are worse than they were 3 weeks ago as well.  Only 30% of voters have a positive opinion of him to 50% with a negative one.  That’s down from an already not so stellar 33/47 spread.  Republicans certainly like him but with independents (23/51) and Democrats (9/74) favor is virtually nonexistent.

Like I said, it’s one poll but this is something worth keeping an eye on over the next several months.