David Brown
-- The Senate Republican leadership telegraphed on the Sunday morning talk shows that a compromise to extend unemployment compensation and the George W. Bush-era tax cuts is in the offing.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, told different interviewers that they expect Congress to vote for the tax cuts, which have been in effect for a decade, to continue unaltered for at least several years in exchange for an agreement to extend jobless benefits that are about to expire for millions of workers.
"Obviously, the president won't sign a permanent extension of the current tax rates. So we're going to have some kind of extension. I'd like one as long as possible," McConnell told host David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." Moments later, he added, "I think we will extend unemployment compensation. . . . We're working on that package. . . . I think we're going to get there."
On CBS's "Face the Nation," Kyl told host Bob Schieffer: "I think that most folks believe that the recipe would include at least an extension of unemployment benefits for those who are unemployed and an extension of all the tax rates for all Americans for some period of time."
On the same program, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, reluctantly concurred.
"I can tell you that without unemployment benefits being extended, personally, this is a nonstarter," he said. "The notion that we would give tax cuts to those making over $1 million a year . . . is unconscionable." But, he added, "We're moving in that direction."
On Saturday, the Senate rejected two Democratic proposals for extending the Bush-era tax cuts, which the Republicans prefer to call "tax rates," because they have been in effect for so long. One would have extended them for the first $250,000 of family income. The second would have extended them for the first $1 million.
The fact that a handful of Democratic senators voted along with every Republican gave McConnell a swaggering confidence that the tax cuts will live on intact.
"Imagine how much worse it would have been [in recent years] if we'd had the higher tax rate," he told Gregory. "Look, this argument's over, David. You and I can continue to engage in it, but it's over. The Senate voted yesterday. Every Republican and five Democrats said, 'We're not raising taxes on anybody in the middle of a recession.' "
On another contentious matter -- ratification of the New START treaty on nuclear weapons with Russia -- McConnell was neutral on whether the lame-duck Congress will consider it, while Kyl thinks it won't.