On State of the Union with Candy Crowley Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said both parties were in “broad agreement” over extending the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012 and said that would be worked out by the end of February. As of now, however, both parties disagree on how to pay for it. McConnell and Crowley went back and forth on the differences between Republicans and Democrats on the issue. Here’s the exchange with Crowley:
MCCONNELL: Well, there’s broad agreement on doing the payroll tax holiday through the end of the year. Republicans, Democrats agree on that. As you indicated the problem is the paying for it. The reason we ended up only doing the two-month extension earlier, Candy, was because our good friends on the Democratic side don’t want to pay for anything. They’d love to do this…
CROWLEY: Well, they do. They just don’t want to pay for it in the same way you do.
MCCONNELL: They don’t want to cut spending. They just don’t want to cut any spending.
CROWLEY: They would like to raise taxes on the wealthy.
MCCONNELL: That’s what made it problematic. And — but we’ll get it done. We’ll get it done by the end of February.
