House and Senate leaders are nearing a sweeping deal on jobless benefits, the payroll tax cut and the Medicare reimbursement rate for physicians, according to several sources familiar with the talks.
Under the potential plan, the two-percentage point payroll tax cut would be extended until the end of the year ? and the $100 billion cost would be added to the deficit. Unemployment benefits would be extended for the next 10 months, at a cost of $30 billion, and doctors who service Medicare physicians would avoid seeing their payments cut, at a cost of $20 billion.
Continue ReadingSources caution that the deal has not been finalized and is subject to approval by lawmakers. Rank-and-file Republicans will voice their opinions at a closed-door House GOP Conference meeting Tuesday night. But if the $150 billion-plus package does make it to President Barack Obama?s desk, it would represent a rare breakthrough for a dysfunctional Congress.
The approximately $50 billion for the so-called ?doc fix? and jobless benefits would be offset by cuts to the budget.
Among the offsets are a federal worker pay freeze and cutting a fund ? created by the Obama health care law and championed by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) ? aimed at promoting healthy living and curtailing chronic diseases.
Benefits would be spared to Medicare recipients, including high-earners, but cuts would be made to hospitals and labs that receive funding under the entitlement program. Spectrum auctions aimed at expanding wireless broadband service and raising revenue would be part of the deal as well.
And sources said the two sides were nearing an agreement to reduce the length of jobless benefits.
Republicans have pushed for unemployment benefits to be reduced from 99 weeks to 59 weeks, but the Obama administration has called for a 79 weeks as a compromise. Under the deal that?s now in the works, the amount of time would be reduced to 75 weeks for states with higher unemployment rates after a transition period set out by the legislation.
The potential deal would drop language called for by Republicans allowing states to drug test potential recipients of jobless benefits and calling for the unemployed to be in a GED program if they have not finished high school. The proposal would include language mirroring a Georgia program giving states the option to create a voluntary training program to jobless benefit applicants.
But some of the parameters were still being finalized as of Tuesday afternoon, including whether certain renewable energy tax breaks and other expiring corporate and individual tax cuts would be part of the plan. And it is still an open question whether the plan will be approved as a single package or passed as two separate bills.
The preference for Republicans and Democrats, according to sources involved, would be that the House-Senate conference committee could produce a proposal, allowing it to move through Congress on a fast-track basis. The outlines of a deal came after talks between House and Senate tax writers, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), along with the top leaders of both parties.
?I would rather have the conference committee do it,? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters. ?If the conference committee does it, it is a non-amendable item. If we get a free-standing bill, it is amendable 1,000 times.?
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said it appears the conference committee will produce a comprehensive bill ?with all of the issues included.?
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