By: Jeffrey Klein, Political Buzz Examiner
Examiner.com

There is a reason that most American voters believe that the United States House and Senate are dysfunctional bodies, and as such, they are bestowing upon Congress the lowest approval ratings ever recorded.

And, the reasons for this have certainly been on display over the past week while trying to get the payroll tax holiday, unemployment benefits and the Medicare “Fix” extended–so they could get out of Washington and begin their month-long Christmas [Holiday] break.

First, the House passed a clear, comprehensive bill, including provisions for funding–mainly through budget cuts–and one forcing President Barack Obama to make a yes or no decision within 60 days (two months), on the 20,000 job Keystone XL Pipeline extension.

If passed into law, this Keystone provision would foil Obama’s bid to delay such a decision until after the 2012 elections–in order to keep the campaign contributions rolling in from labor unions and environmentalists.

This put the Democrat-controlled Senate into a “politically inconvenient corner.”

In reaction, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), authored his own version, matching the House bill–except it only extended the payroll-tax holiday by two months, presumably to match the Keystone “trigger” provision, but without any source of funding.

It passed the Senate 89 to 10, with 37 Republicans joining in.

Then, on Monday, House Speaker John Boehner rejected the Senate bill, saying … “Americans are tired of Washington’s short-term fixes and gimmicks and fixes. We oppose the Senate bill because doing a two-month extension, instead of a full-year extension, causes uncertainty for job creators,” according to an ABC News article from yesterday, in Yahoo news today.

Regardless, a “hitch” surfaced in the Senate bill, effectively neutralizing it from ever being enacted.

In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Ways and Means committees, Pete Isberg, president the National Payroll Reporting Consortium, whose members serve 1.5 million employers, representing more than one-third of the private-sector workforce, wrote that the Senate’s two-month extension allows “insufficient lead time” to institute changes by Feb. 29.

So, even if the bill were made law, it’s logistically impossible to make the changes in tax software before the extension expires, according to reporting in FOXNews today.

In the letter, Isberg said he understands Congress’ concern about the seeming inequality of highly compensated employees getting their entire yearly tax break in the first two months of 2012.

“Nevertheless, with the first of January now only two weeks away and payroll departments trying to meet year-end compliance mandates and reconciliation, there simply is insufficient time to implement this major change in withholding requirements,” he wrote.

“Many payroll systems are not likely to be able to make such a substantial programming change before January or even February. The systems affected tend to be highly complex, normally requiring at least 90 days for a change of this magnitude for software testing alone; not to mention analysis, design, coding and implementation … creating “substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees,” he wrote.

Isberg told Fox News that as employers are even now preparing for payroll due in the first days of January, they do so without a decision from Congress on taxes; and even once that is decided, they also must await an IRS rule as to how they must institute Congress’ changes to the tax schedule.

According to the FOXNews article, a Senate aide emailed FOX Business Network saying … [Senate Democrats] “wanted to make sure that, if for some reason the cut isn’t extended past the two months, wealthier people didn’t get the full 110K worth of tax cut in the first two months (cause [sic] they hit 110K quickly), while lower income people would only see a couple months worth of it.”

“So they actually lowered the cap as if no one pays payroll tax above 18K a year. Nice thought, but it will require a massive re-coding of payroll tax software that makes it unworkable in practice,” the aide said.

According to Rep. Allen West, who was interviewed on this subject by FOXNews, barring the software logistical problem, it seems like Senate Democrats want to further the appearance of dysfunction, which is directly enabled by our “divided” government–with Republicans controlling the House and the Senate having a Democrat majority.

It seems all to clear that since January 2011, when control of the House of Representatives swung to the Republicans, the Democrat led Senate has been the “bottleneck” against making any progress–always creating a round block to sound fiscal, economic and regulatory policy.

But now, legitimate polling of likely voters by Rasmussen, reveals that 77 percent feel “Which party controls Congress is very important.”

And, from there, proceeding to the logical question, contrary to what the mainstream media “manufactured” polling would continuously have you believe, the American [voting] people have positively identified the culprits–the Democrat party–every week since Obama was inaugurated.

So, are Senate Democrats really the road block to our recovery?

Copyright (c) 2011 by Jeffrey Klein