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.

The House returns to session today, and you can forgive them for feeling a distinct sense of deja vu. When they left, they faced a deadline to pass a payroll tax cut, extended unemployment benefits and a doctor’s fix for Medicare reimbursement rates. Weeks later, they return to a deadline to pass a payroll tax cut, extended unemployment benefits and a doctor’s fix for Medicare reimbursement rates. Even that limited agenda will be a stretch for the GOP.

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 [...]

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.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who negotiated the two-month stopgap bill on the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix that passed the Senate with 89 votes, ended his silence on the House GOP actions on the bill, by saying that they should go ahead and pass the stopgap. This further isolates John Boehner and House Republicans.

During a pro forma session designed to block recess appointments (streams crossing), Steny Hoyer asks for unanimous consent to bring up the Senate two-month stopgap on the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doc fix. Instead of just objecting to UC, the presiding officer, in this case Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), just ignores Hoyer and gavels down the session, walking away. This allows Hoyer to grandstand on CSPAN.

House Republicans left behind eight “conferees” for a conference on the payroll tax/UI/doc fix bill, and plan to hold showy events where they sit in a room alone, but Democrats have adamantly refused to reopen negotiations until the short-term bill passes. Meanwhile, half of the conferees opposed the payroll tax cut extension as recently as a few weeks ago. So far, nobody’s buying the GOP spin.

The President showed up unscheduled at a White House briefing today to excoriate House Republicans for fouling up a Senate deal on a stopgap measure to extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits and a doctor’s reimbursement fix. But there are a number of other measures that also will not get extended into next year, including the production tax credit for wind energy.

The House of Representatives officially rejected the bipartisan agreement that passed the Senate for a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, extended unemployment benefits and a doctor’s fix to prevent a 27% reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates. They did so under a complicated scheme whereby members did not vote on the Senate deal itself, with the rejection of the Senate deal implicit in the exchange.

The procedural wizards in the House Republican caucus stayed up late last night to concoct this scheme, a way to dispose of the Senate’s payroll tax deal by voting affirmatively. They think this helps insulate their members from charges of rejecting the deal, and causing a tax increase of on average $1,000 a year. Here’s how it’ll go down.