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 House GOP caucus definitely wants to try to force the issue on the Keystone XL pipeline with another vote. What’s not yet clear is where they want to place the rider. If they choose to attach it to payroll tax cut/UI legislation, that’s an indicator that they really want it to pass. If not, it’s an indicator that they just want to talk about it some more.

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.

The White House announced its lawyers view the President’s power to make recess appointments to be unfettered by GOP pro forma efforts to keep the Senate in session merely to obstruct the power to make appointments. This means the President may soon make other recess appointments, including to the National Labor Relations Board, which currently cannot operate because it lacks of quorum.

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.

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!

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.

Regarding the payroll tax cut deal, apparently the plan is for a straight up-or-down vote tonight on the measure. House Speaker John Boehner promised that the vote would fail. That creates another stalemate, and Boehner misled his Senate GOP colleagues who already voted for the Senate bill.