House Passes Payroll Tax Cut

House of Representatives - POLITICS

House Passes Payroll Tax Cut Extension With Keystone Pipeline Provision

Published December 13, 2011

| Associated Press

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  AP
  December 13, 2011: House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, center, accompanied by fellow Republican leaders, meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington.

WASHINGTON –  Defiant Republicans pushed legislation through the House Tuesday night that would keep alive Social Security payroll tax cuts for some 160 million Americans at President Barack Obama's request -- 

but also would require construction of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that has sparked a White House veto threat.

Passage, on a largely party-line vote of 234-193, sent the measure toward its certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate, triggering the final partisan showdown of a remarkably quarrelsome year of divided government.