He's feeling the heat of Elizabeth Warren on his neck!
Brown to House GOP: Your actions hurt average Americans
By Michael J. Bailey
| Globe Staff
December 20, 2011
Senator Scott Brown, positioning himself on the frontline of frustration between some moderate Senate Republicans and House GOP leaders, today again denounced his House colleagues over their blocking of a bipartisan compromise that would extend the payroll tax cut for two months.
“It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions,’’ the Massachusetts Republican said in a statement released minutes after the Republican-controlled House voted against the compromise, which the Senate had overwhelmingly passed on Saturday. “Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to our fragile economy.
“We are Americans first; now is not the time for drawing lines in the sand.’’
Brown lambasted House Republicans yesterday before the vote, saying their opposition was “irresponsible and wrong.”
Other moderate Republican senators, including Dean Heller of Nevada and Olympia Snowe of Maine, have also spoken out against the House opposition, but their language was calibrated more to cajole rather than to castigate.
Brown is expected to face a tough reelection battle next fall in a traditionally liberal-leaning state. Elizabeth Warren, consumer watchdog and Harvard Law School professor, has emerged from a field of Democratic candidates as a voice against both politics as usual in Washington and against outsized influence of Wall Street institutions.
With today’s vote in the House, GOP leaders are calling on senators to return from their holiday break to resolve their differences and pass a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut, which benefits the average American worker about $1,000 a year. The Senate’s bill also extends jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and protects doctors from a scheduled 27 percent decrease in Medicare reimbursement rates.
The payroll tax cut has been the centerpiece of President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan. Most of the other provisions in the plan had been rejected by Republicans.
“Without a resolution, millions of workers will take home smaller paychecks, and families relying on unemployment benefits will lose their lifeline,’’ Brown said. “Of all the ugly partisanship that has disappointed the nation this year, this latest episode will hurt hard-working Americans directly and immediately.’’
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