The plan being crafted could include a cut to the payroll tax — a funding mechanism for Social Security and Medicare.
Progressives are pushing Democratic congressional leaders to forcefully oppose the Senate GOP’s coronavirus stimulus legislation after new reporting Monday revealed the package is likely to include a payroll tax cut, a reduction in enhanced unemployment payments, conditions on school funding, and little aid to state and local governments.
“After weeks of sitting on their hands and doing nothing while infections and deaths rise and tens of millions of people fear an imminent economic catastrophe, the reported plan Senate Republicans put out today would be laughable if it wasn’t so outright shameful and harmful,” said Care in Action, Community Change Action, Indivisible, MoveOn, and Greenpeace in a joint statement Monday.
The advocacy groups called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N. Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to “reject this plan outright.”
“The plan put forth by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will do nothing but double down on the failed policies that put corporate profits before workers and families, and that helped get us here in the first place,” the groups said. “It is not a good faith starting point to negotiations.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) confirmed to reporters Monday that the plan being crafted in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office will include a cut to the payroll tax — a funding mechanism for Social Security and Medicare. “It’s one of the issues that we’re proposing,” said McCarthy.
An anonymous White House official toldRoll Call that the Republican proposal under consideration would defer payment of the payroll tax to a later date. Congress would then have the option of waiving the payback requirement with separate legislation.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said in a statement Monday that the Trump-GOP push for a payroll tax cut amounts to an effort to “raid” the Social Security system’s “dedicated revenue as a pathway to destroying it.
