GOP Senators Float Plan to Pay for Unemployment Extension - East Idaho News
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GOP Senators Float Plan to Pay for Unemployment Extension

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Getty 010814 CapitolDome?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1389206952018iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — A bill to extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million jobless Americans made a surprise advance Tuesday in the Senate with the support of six Republicans. But on Wednesday, several of those same GOP lawmakers warned they would withdraw their support in the next key vote unless the measure is amended and paid for.

“I won’t vote to end debate without offsets” to the cost, said Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

“If there’s not an offset, I won’t vote for cloture either,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

Ayotte and six Republican colleagues are pushing a proposal to fund the three-month benefits extension — a plan they cast as a compromise that Democrats would be fools to ignore.  

Their amendment would adjust the tax code to require anyone claiming the Additional Child Tax Credit to produce a Social Security number in order to qualify. A 2011 Treasury audit found the credit was inappropriately claimed by people not authorized to work in the U.S. at a cost of $4.2 billion.

“This is fraud, it should be stopped. We should make this change,” said Ayotte.

“The pay-for is good government and hardly anybody can disagree with that,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

The change would save an estimated $20 billion over 10 years — enough to fund a three-month extension of unemployment insurance, repeal trims to cost-of-living increases for some military retirees in last month’s budget deal and yield modest deficit savings to boot, the lawmakers said.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia praised the inclusion of a “fix” to retirement benefit cuts for some veterans, which some Democrats have also wanted to resolve, as “an all-American pay-for.”

Still, it’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow a vote on Ayotte’s amendment. Earlier Wednesday he said explicitly on the floor of the Senate that he is “opposed to offsetting costs of emergency unemployment benefits — let me repeat — emergency unemployment benefits.”

There are as of yet no Democratic co-sponsors of the amendment, though some have expressed openness to it, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters. “They are waiting to see what their leader will do,” she said.

“There’s only one reason the majority leader would not allow a vote on this: that’s that he wants a problem, not a solution,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson.

Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio

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