NPR News 2011-12-23 加文本

NPR News 2011-12-23

From NPR News in Washington, I'm Barbara Klein.

President Obama is continuing to pressure on House Republicans to approve a Senate-passed measure that extends the payroll tax cut for two months.

“The House needs to pass a short-term version of this compromise, and then we should negotiate an agreement as quickly as possible to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for the rest of 2012.”

Even the Senate's top Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling the House GOP to move on the short-term extension. But Speaker John Boehner isn't bulging.

“A two-month extension only perpetuates the uncertainty that too many employers already have in dealing with the economy and what's coming out of Washington.”

Democrats say the House GOP bill includes several difficult issues that it’ll take more time to resolve, including cuts in unemployment benefits and weaker environmental regulations. The current payroll tax cut expires December 31st.

Former President George H. W. Bush says he’s informally endorsing Mitt Romney. The Republican presidential candidate is currently trying to nail down votes in New Hampshire with a bus tour across the state. As NPR's Ari Shapiro reports, the primary there is less than three weeks away.

Romney has given informal remarks at most of his stops on this bus trip, but he spends more this time interacting with the locals during a sort of retail politics that's virtually required to win the New Hampshire primary.

“We want to make sure and shake hands with everybody here, because just as I was told unless you shake our hands, you won't vote for us. So I’m going to shake your hands. If you want to get a picture, I’ll do that too.”

At an agricultural supply store in Lancaster, he chatted with voters about the amount of the milk a dairy cow can produce. Romney lost the state to John McCain four years ago. This three-day bus trip is the campaign's way of ensuring that it doesn't happen again. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Randolph, Hampshire.

The Italian senate has approved Prime Minister Mario Monti's package of tough austerity measures five weeks after he replaced the controversial Silvio Berlusconi. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, the budget cuts and tax hikes are aimed at restoring market confidence in the eurozone's third largest economy.

The package passed easily with 257 ayes to 41 nays cast mostly by the opposition Northern League. Before the vote, Monti told the senate his technocrat government had to push through the measures as fast as possible due to the untenable levels of Italy's borrowing costs. Monti said Italy can now hold its head high in Europe, and he added that after addressing Italy's massive debt, 120% of the country's GDP, the government will turn its attention to the country's other major economic burden a decade of close to zero growth, and Monti repeated what he has said several times in recent weeks that European policy must address growth as well as cutting debts. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.

An hour before the close on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 49 points at 12,156; the NASDAQ is up 19 at 2,597; the S&P is up 10.

This is NPR.

Explosions in Baghdad are continuing through the evening following a day of 14 apparently coordinated bombings across the city. At least 69 people are dead. The violence coincides with the departure of the last US troops from Iraq.

The government of Pennsylvania has signed a law requiring tougher regulation of the state’s abortion clinics. As NPR's Joel Rose reports, critics warned the new law may limit access to safe abortions.

Governor Tom Corbett signed the law almost a year after a grand jury report described a long list of unsanitary and criminal practices at the Philadelphia abortion clinic run by Kermit Gosnell. Supporters say the law will protect women's health by holding abortion providers in Pennsylvania to the same standards as outpatient surgical facilities. It requires abortion providers to have elevators and larger operating rooms and to driveways that can accommodate an ambulance. Opponents of the law say it will make it more expensive for abortion providers to continue operating, which in turn could make it more difficult for women to get a safe and legal abortion. Opponents say better enforcement of existing laws would have been enough to shut down Gosnell's clinic. Joel Rose, NPR News.

South Carolina is being prohibited from enforcing parts of its tough new immigration law. It was set to take effect January 1st. But a US district court judge today ruled the federal government has exclusive constitutional authority to regulate immigration. Among the provisions that are blocked, a requirement that police check the immigration status of people they pull over if they suspect they are in the country illegally. The judge is also suspending all hearings on the case until the US Supreme Court rules on a similar law in Arizona.

I'm Barbara Klein, NPR News in Washington.