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House GOP Seeks Votes This Week on Agenda Items

House Republicans will seek to make good on their “Pledge to America” by forcing a series of votes this week on measures listed in their newly released agenda, GOP leadership aides said Monday.

Republicans would use all the procedural tools available to them — such as the motion to recommit — to push for votes on Wednesday and Thursday.

The aides did not specify which issue would be pushed first, but they hinted that provisions having to do with job creation and reducing government spending would be at the top of the list.

“The Pledge is a set of first priorities that reflect the will of the American people on jobs, spending, congressional reform and other key issues,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the agenda project, wrote in an e-mail. “The Democratic leadership in Congress is defying the will of the people and turning its back on our economy by refusing to bring these measures to a vote.”

Katie Grant, a spokeswoman for Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), said if Republicans cared about American priorities their agenda would have included a plan to stop the outsourcing of American jobs.

“Instead they want to go back to the exact same agenda that lost millions of jobs and ran up the deficit,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Those are their priorities, and the American people will reject it.”

During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Chief Deputy Minority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House GOP agenda project, said extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts before Congress adjourns is one of their main priorities.

The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire on Jan. 1.

Congressional Democrats have expressed support for an extension of the tax cuts to the middle class.

Hoyer, who appeared on the Fox show after the Republican leaders, said a House vote on the tax cuts was unlikely because the Senate doesn’t intend to act before the elections.

Republicans will also release a “pledge card” this week, which will serve as a condensed, pocket-sized version of the 45-page document that was unveiled in Sterling, Va., last week.

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