The payroll tax cut extension is not linked to a controversial U.S.-Canadian pipeline, President Barack Obama said Wednesday, stating that he would reject any effort to tie the two issues.
"If the payroll tax cut is attached to a whole bunch of extraneous issues not related to making sure that the American people's taxes don't go up on Jan. 1, then it's not something that I'm going to accept," UPI.com quoted Obama as saying after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"And I don't expect to have to veto it because I expect they're going to have enough sense over on Capitol Hill to do the people's business, and not try to load it up with a bunch of politics."
Any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut I will reject," he said, singling out TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the southern U.S. coast.
Obama said the Social Security payroll tax cut extension is "something that House Republicans, as well as Senate Republicans, should want to do regardless of any other issues. The question is going to be, are they willing to vote against a proposal that ensures that Americans, at a time when the recovery is still fragile, don't see their taxes go up by $1,000. So it shouldn't be held hostage for any other issues that they may be concerned about."
