In an impressive bit of caving, the House Republican leadership has given up on finding offsets for the payroll tax cut, proposing a bill that would extend the current cut to the end of the year without any funding. However, the other two pieces that were tied to the overall legislation at the end of last year, extended unemployment benefits and the “doc fix” to avoid a reset of Medicare reimbursement rates, would not be included.

The conference committee for the payroll tax cut is on a road to nowhere, and it’s clear that the House and Senate leadership will have to step in if the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix will get extended beyond the end of the month.

The Senate will vote as early as today on whether to punish transportation unions in a bid to get Federal Aviation Administration authorization through 2015. The House already passed its version of a “bipartisan compromise.” and unions can’t seem to get the Senate to stop it.

The payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits expire on February 29. And though the House-Senate conference committee charged with figuring out a year-long extension met yesterday, there really isn’t a lot of movement toward a solution. Pay-fors seem to be the biggest stumbling block.

So the first two days of the second session of the 112th Congress has consisted of a day of basically nothing, and a day with a meaningless resolution. And by the way, the House is leaving for the rest of the week. Congress, earning those 8% approval ratings every day. As for whether/how the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance will be extended, that now depends on how they’re paid for.

Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats pulled off a neat little trick yesterday. The two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance really only allows for one month of negotiation in the conference committee, since Congress stands in recess until the end of January. But there’s no reason that the conference committee cannot begin its work beforehand. So Pelosi stood in Washington yesterday, with House Democratic conferees, and demanded to know why Republicans wouldn’t come back to Washington to finish the deal.

Steve Benen thinks that the payroll tax cut is doomed, based on the conferees the Senate Republicans added to hammer out a long-term agreement. The newly named Republican conferees are Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona, Michael D. Crapo of Idaho and John Barrasso of Wyoming [...] These aren’t three senators you’d appoint to a conference [...]

As Charlie Pierce writes, one reason why we should hold back on the celebration over the two-month extension on the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance is that the conference committee has yet to work its will on the process. We don’t really know what is bound to come out of that, but we can guess. The GOP passed a bill that will reduce the benefits and make getting them a punitive experience.

There’s still the larger issue of a one-year agreement. The conference committee may not meet until the House and Senate return to Washington in late January, giving them just a few weeks to come to an agreement. Typically conference committees with this kind of high profile end up getting decided in back rooms by the party leadership anyway. So the conference committee thing is largely a dodge so Republicans can say they got something in this exchange. They really didn’t. They politically gave in to the Democratic demand.

The media is circulating a proposal in which the GOP House votes for the 2-month tax cut extension on condition there’s a conference committee to work on the full year extension and bound to the rule that its costs are offset by spending cuts. It lets the GOP crazies completely off the hook while forcing more spending cuts in government programs. Auhor! Author!