Heller, Berkley offer competing views on payroll tax cut

Congress on Thursday continued debating plans to keep Social Security payroll taxes low for another year, with the Senate taking votes on competing Democrat and Republican initiatives and failing to garner sufficient support for either one of them.

The debate provided an opportunity for Nevada's 2012 U.S. Senate candidates to lay out their competing stances on the issue. Both agree that payroll taxes should be reduced into 2012, but disagree on how they should be paid for.

Here is video of Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., speaking in favor of a Republican plan that would continue the payroll tax cut and pay for it by freezing federal worker salaries for three more years, reducing the government workforce and increasing Medicare premiums for the wealthiest recipients. Democrats complained that will reduce services provided by federal workers and also lead to cuts in Medicare.

Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley criticized the GOP approach in a U.S. House speech, and called for Congress to stay in session through the holidays if necessary to reach a deal. Democrats proposed to pay for the payroll tax break by applying a 1.9 percent tax surcharge on people who earn more than $1 million annually, a plan that Republicans said would raise taxes on small businesses and "job creators."

Both houses of Congress went home for the weekend on Thursday afternoon, and will resume action next week.

Leaders have said they hope to complete a long list of 2011 work by the end of next week, a goal that may be a challenge to achieve.