Payroll Tax Extension Sparks GOP Candidate Debate (ContributorNetwork)

After a prolonged partisan stalemate, House Speaker John Boehner announced on Thursday that congressional leaders had reached a deal to extend the payroll tax cut.

The New York Times reports that the plan extends both the current level of the payroll tax and unemployment insurance benefits through February, and on his Twitter account, President Obama declared that ?because of this agreement, every working American will keep his or her tax cut?about $1,000 for the average family.?

Still, many Republicans, including some of the contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, have called the proposal a gimmick and a temporary band-aid.

Here is what they have said, specifically, according to recent ABC News and CNBC Republican debate transcripts:

* Michele Bachmann: ?This tax cut shouldn?t have been put in the first place, the payroll tax extension, because last December, I fought against this. And I encouraged my colleagues not to go down this road. This is President Obama?s plan, a temporary gimmick, not permanent solution. ? The reason why this is so detrimental to the economy as well is that this blew a hole, in other words, it took away $111 billion away from the Social Security Trust Fund. This is a very real issue for senior citizens, because we have to pay the Social Security checks that are going out.?

* Ron Paul: ?I want to extend the tax cut, because if you don?t, you raise the taxes. But I wanna pay for it. And it?s not that difficult. In my proposal, in my budget, I wanna cut hundreds of billions of dollars from overseas. The trust fund is gone. But how are we gonna restore it? We have to quit the spending. We have to quit this being the policemen of the world.?

* Newt Gingrich: ?I?m not prepared to raise taxes on working Americans in the middle of a recession that?s this bad. But let me put Social Security in context. In 1968, in order to fake a balanced budget, Lyndon Johnson brought Social Security into the general budget. And ever since politicians have hid behind Social Security.

I think the first step is you take Social Security off the federal budget and you don?t try to solve the budget deficit problem on the back of working Americans and retirees.?

* Mitt Romney: ?I don?t wanna raise taxes on people, particularly people in the middle class that are suffering right now under the Obama economy. It?s a temporary tax cut, and it?ll help people in a very difficult time. But let?s recognize, this is just a band-aid. ?I?m not looking to raise taxes. What I?m looking to do is to cut spending. And that?s why this last week I put out a plan that dramatically cuts spending in Washington, that gets us to a 20 percent cap, and makes sure that we have a balanced budget thereafter.?

* Rick Perry: ?We?re either gonna have a serious debate on how to fix Social Security, and we?re not gonna do it by taking resources away from Social Security to pay benefits. So I?m all for tax cuts ? I?ll welcome the president to sit down with Republicans in Congress to work on a tax cut that?s gonna create growth in the economy. But to take the Social Security Trust Fund that is so sacrosanct to the Democrats when it comes for election time and then to use that as a tax and then try to beat up Republicans for not supporting the tax cut is absurd. You either care about Social Security and you wanna fund it, or you don?t.?

Article Source

Source: http://electionsnews.net/?p=11316

philadelphia marathon rhodes scholar cranberry sauce recipe mls cup amas 2011 black friday elliot