Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with Sen. Chuck Schumer in background (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Greg Sargent
gets the news from Senate Democrats.
For Senate Democrats, the most important vote on the payroll tax cut extension last night may not have been the one on the Dem proposal, but the one on the GOP proposal. When a majority of Republicans voted against the GOP plan — which would have been funded by spending cuts — that signaled that many Senate Republicans seem to oppose any payroll tax cut extension, not just taxing the rich to pay for it.
With this in mind, Senate Democrats have decided to increase the pressure on Republicans on the issue by holding yet another vote on the extension next week, a senior Senate Democratic aide says. [...]
The idea here is that by voting against their own proposal, Republicans may have further boxed in those GOP Senators who eventually want to vote Yes on the extension. Before, they could vote No on the Dem plan and excuse it by saying the GOP had an alternative. [...]
“By showing that they couldn’t even keep their own caucus together on their own proposal, they have frittered away their leverage in negotiations,” the Dem aide says.
The aide tells Sargent that Democrats would consider "alternate ways to pay for the extension," to see if they might be able to attract more Republican support. One Republican, Susan Collins, did vote for the Democratic proposal of a millionaire's surtax. From a pure politics standpoint, Democrats shouldn't be too willing to negotiate away from the tax-the-rich plan. It provides the best possible contrast to the Republican's unwillingness to extend help to the middle class.