Rep. Maloney statement on payroll tax cut vote

WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, released the following statement on the House Republican leadership’s decision to bring a stand-alone payroll tax cut extension bill to the floor:

“Like everything else in Washington these days, the payroll tax cut holiday extension is a kind of good news/bad news joke.  The good news is that the House Majority has decided to do what we in the House minority have been advocating all along—namely, extend the payroll tax holiday for the remainder of 2012 without offsets.

“But the bad news is that in so doing, the Majority has separated the extension of unemployment insurance and the SGR ‘doc fix’ that was part of the temporary two-month extension passed in December and part of the Senate bill that the Conference Committee was supposed to be considering.

“Extending the payroll tax cut holiday is good news for 160 million American families, putting about $1,000 in their pockets, and I’m delighted to support it-- but it shouldn’t be a substitute for the Conference Committee doing its whole job. Ending unemployment insurance for millions more Americans and cutting Medicare payments to hundreds of thousands of doctors--just two short weeks from now-- is the wrong step for our country as we continue to emerge from the Great Recession.”