Black Statement on Two-Month Payroll Tax Cut Deal

Statement

Today, U.S. Representative Diane Black (R-TN), released the following statement on the deal reached between House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

The deal reached between the House and the Senate is politics at its worst, and I am angry and frustrated that Congress has decided to play political games to support such bad policy.

"I flew back to Washington earlier this week because I felt enacting tax policy for two months made absolutely no sense. The shortest financial planning window for employers is quarterly, which is three months not two months as proposed by the Senate.

"What's more, fixing the Medicare reimbursement rate for two months isn't fixing anything. When the House first passed our year-end legislation, we ensured Medicare physicians would not see a drop in their payments for two full years. And we took steps to get Washington out of the way by lifting the EPA's job-crushing Boiler MACT regulation, supporting small business investment, and substantially reforming unemployment insurance in order to get people back to work.

"Long-term, Congress must stop taking money from Social Security and we must permanently fix Medicare physician's reimbursement rates. Businesses, doctors, individual taxpayers and our nation's seniors deserve more than a come-back-in-two-months strategy.

"This debate is the perfect example of exactly what is wrong with Washington, where too often political games stand in the way of sound policy solutions."

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