As expect­ed, in a series of votes ear­li­er today, House Repub­li­cans for­mal­ly blocked leg­is­la­tion over­whelm­ing­ly approved by the U.S. Sen­ate a few days ago that would tem­porar­i­ly extend the one-year pay­roll tax break enact­ed by Con­gress last year (S. Amdt. 1465 to H.R. 3630) for anoth­er two months.

The House­’s action threat­ens the com­pro­mise on the pay­roll tax break worked out by Har­ry Reid and Mitch McConnell, the respec­tive lead­ers of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can cau­cus­es — at John Boehn­er’s request, no less:

When asked Fri­day night whether he had received assur­ances from Boehn­er that the short-term exten­sion would pass, McConnell did not give an explic­it “yes” but seemed to indi­cate things were in good shape.

“I’m opti­mistic that we’re going to do well in the morn­ing, and obvi­ous­ly I keep the Speak­er informed as to what I’m doing,” McConnell said as he left the Capitol.

The 48-hour tec­ton­ic shift is indica­tive of either a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Con­gress’ two top Repub­li­cans or a mis­cal­cu­la­tion on Boehner’s part that he would be able to ral­ly enough votes. Boehn­er had told McConnell and Reid to come up with a solution.

In a state­ment released a short time ago, Reid cas­ti­gat­ed both House and Sen­ate Repub­li­cans for putting the pay­roll tax break exten­sion in jeopardy.

“First Sen­a­tor McConnell would not let the Sen­ate vote on the House’s pay­roll tax cut bill because he knew it would fail, now Speak­er Boehn­er won’t let the House hold an up-or-down vote on the Senate’s bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise because he knows it would pass,” Reid said. He also indi­cat­ed that he is not inter­est­ed in recon­ven­ing the Sen­ate to address the objec­tions of Boehn­er and his rebel­lious caucus.

“I have been try­ing to nego­ti­ate a year­long exten­sion with Repub­li­cans for weeks, and I am hap­py to con­tin­ue doing so as soon as the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives pass­es the bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise… but not before then,” Reid said.

The White House is sid­ing with Reid on the matter.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma inter­rupt­ed Jay Car­ney’s week­day brief­ing in the James Brady Press Brief­ing Room at 11:07 AM Pacif­ic to denounce the vote and call on House Repub­li­cans to pass the leg­is­la­tion approved by the Senate.

“The clock is tick­ing; time is run­ning out,” the Pres­i­dent told reporters.

“And if the House Repub­li­cans refuse to vote for the Sen­ate bill, or even allow it to come up for a vote, tax­es will go up in eleven days.”

“I saw today that one of the House Repub­li­cans referred to what they’re doing as, ‘high-stakes pok­er.’ He’s right about the stakes, but this is not pok­er, this is not a game — this shouldn’t be pol­i­tics as usual.”

We think the Pres­i­dent has this back­wards. Usu­al­ly, cut­ting tax­es or extend­ing tax cuts is some­thing that Con­gress can agree on… even when there is no evi­dence that doing so will real­ly improve Amer­i­cans’ eco­nom­ic security.

The fact that this blog post is con­cerned with the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the exten­sion of a pay­roll tax break — rather than, say, the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing leg­is­la­tion to boost a recov­ery by strength­en­ing our com­mon wealth and invest­ing in bad­ly need­ed pub­lic infra­struc­ture — is proof that pol­i­tics as usu­al has been pre­vail­ing all along in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, to the detri­ment of us all.

As Dean Bak­er says:

It was essen­tial that Oba­ma keep lead­ing the charge on stim­u­lus, explain­ing to the coun­try the cause of the economy’s weak­ness was a lack of demand. This sto­ry is counter-intu­itive so it requires the voice of the pres­i­dent, along with many oth­ers, to con­stant­ly explain the log­ic to the coun­try. Peo­ple had to under­stand that we are poor because the coun­try as a whole is spend­ing too lit­tle to keep the work­force ful­ly employed, not that the gov­ern­ment is spend­ing too much.

This is the con­text in which we are argu­ing over extend­ing the reduc­tion in the Social Secu­ri­ty pay­roll tax for anoth­er two years. As stim­u­lus, this is not an espe­cial­ly good mea­sure. On a per-dol­lar basis, tax cuts will be much less effec­tive, espe­cial­ly with peo­ple car­ry­ing so much debt, than direct spend­ing. Fur­ther­more, many of these tax dol­lars will go to bet­ter off tax­pay­ers who are less will­ing to spend than mod­er­ate-income fam­i­lies. The Mak­ing Work Pay tax cred­it was much bet­ter targeted.

Mod­ern macro­eco­nom­ics teach­es us that invest­ment by our fed­er­al, state, and local gov­ern­ments is the most effec­tive form of expan­sion­ary fis­cal pol­i­cy (or stim­u­lus) we can pur­sue. But instead of using the bul­ly pul­pit of the pres­i­den­cy to cham­pi­on increased invest­ment in Amer­i­ca, our Com­man­der-in-Chief and his team have main­ly been push­ing tax cuts… and dis­cov­er­ing, to their cha­grin, that Repub­li­cans are only inter­est­ed in cut­ting tax­es if they can so do on their terms.

Hence, the cur­rent stand­off. Every sea­son is now sil­ly sea­son in in our nation’s cap­i­tal, since Repub­li­cans insist on fly­ing the ele­phant above the Stars and Stripes.  And since they have con­trol of both hous­es of Con­gress (Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have de fac­to con­trol of the Sen­ate thanks to the threat of the fil­i­buster) they can hold up the peo­ple’s busi­ness for as long as they like. And they have. Repeatedly.

If we had to sum up 2011 leg­isla­tive­ly, we’d give it the title, “The Year of Grid­lock.” 2012 won’t be much dif­fer­ent… except that Con­gress prob­a­bly will be in ses­sion few­er days out of the year, part­ly due to the pres­i­den­tial election.

If we allowed some of the recent tax cuts enact­ed by Con­gress to expire, we could use the rev­enue recov­ered by our com­mon wealth to pay down some of our debt, increase pub­lic invest­ments, and strength­en our social safe­ty net. In oth­er words, by for­go­ing the weak­est form of expan­sion­ary fis­cal pol­i­cy, we could pur­sue the two more stronger forms of stim­u­lus with­out adding to our debt.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at present, the peo­ple who sup­pos­ed­ly rep­re­sent us and claim to be look­ing out for our well-being are not even talk­ing about doing that.