Politics & Government

WASHINGTON — Members of a House-Senate committee charged with writing a measure to extend a payroll-tax reduction and provide added unemployment benefits reached a tentative agreement Tuesday night, with Republicans and Democrats claiming a degree of political victory in a fight with significant election-year implications.

One day after House Republican leaders said that they would offer a bill that would extend the $100 billion payroll-tax rollback for millions of working Americans without requiring spending cuts to pay for it, the congressional negotiators struck a broader deal that also would extend unemployment benefits and prevent a large cut in reimbursements to doctors who accept Medicare.

A vote on the measure likely would happen by Friday, when Congress plans to recess for a week. But senior aides warned negotiators still had to sign off formally on the agreement and that obstacles could surface, given long-running tensions over the measure.

Democrats, elated after winning the Republican tax concession after months of clashes, said they also had been able to beat back Republican attempts to significantly reduce the number of weeks in which the unemployed could draw benefits and had blocked new conditions that Republicans had wanted on jobless pay, such as requiring beneficiaries to seek high-school-equivalency degrees.

Republicans did make Democrats pay for the added unemployment benefits through changes to federal pensions, aides said. More important, GOP leaders and their advisers said they had removed an election-year hammer from the hands of President Obama and congressional Democrats, depriving them of the ability to keep pounding on the idea that Republicans were resistant to tax cuts for the middle class.

The deal also appeared to solidify House Speaker John Boehner's shift in leadership strategy, signaled at the end of the last year when he forced a short-term payroll-tax extension on his fractious rank and file. The agreement Tuesday suggested he would spend the balance of the year doing what he believed was best for his party and its chances of holding on to the House, and less time fretting over whether the most conservative corner of his members were with him.

In fact, the plan emerging from the negotiating committee could require the acquiescence of House Democrats to secure the 218 votes it needs for passage.

The tentative accord emerged after Obama earlier Tuesday welcomed signs of progress in extending a payroll-tax cut but urged Americans to continue to press their representatives to approve the tax break quickly, before it expires at the end of the month.

"As you guys know, you can't take anything for granted here in Washington — until my signature is actually on it," the president said in an appearance in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.

He apparently was referring to December, when Senate Republicans initially agreed to a two-month payroll extension only to have House Republicans balk. The president won that fight after House Republicans buckled under political pressure and an onslaught of calls and emails from constituents.

Republicans said the House leadership decided to capitulate on paying for the tax cut because it appeared Democrats were going to hold out in the talks and blame Republicans for the impasse if there were no resolution.

"I can understand why the House leadership, exasperated with the lack of progress in the conference, is looking around at other alternatives," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

While many rank-and-file members said they needed more time to study the agreement, and leaders in both parties preferred to stay mum until they were ready to make formal announcements, Democrats privately were crowing Tuesday night that the deal reflected far more of their priorities than their counterparts'. Republicans, acknowledging there were few substantive policy victories to claim, said they believed it was worth it to avoid a protracted fight over benefits that together touch the lives of nearly every American.

The highest priority for Democrats beside the payroll-tax cut was to have a significant extension of unemployment benefits. Republicans wanted to move down from the maximum of 99 weeks to 59 weeks, while Senate Democrats proposed 93 weeks. In the tentative deal, the maximum number of weeks would be 73, a level that largely would be reserved for states with high unemployment. That extension would be paid for with the pension change for federal workers coupled with the sale of radio spectrum licenses and other smaller producers of revenue.

The piece of the deal that would protect doctors from a massive cut in Medicare reimbursement fees would do so through cuts in the new prevention and public health fund established in the health-care law, combined with other spending trims related to health care.

The agreement was brokered almost completely by the two top tax writers in Congress, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.

New York Times reporter Helene Cooper contributed to this report.