As Democrats continue to push a renewal of the payroll tax cut included in last year’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, members of the Republican Party have reportedly grown concerned that if they do not go along with the proposal, they will lose their reputation as anti-tax zealots and get painted as defenders of the richest Americans. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R), apparently, is not one of those Republicans.

Speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, Kyl blasted the plan put forth today by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), which would partially pay for the extension by instituting a temporary surtax on Americans whose incomes top $1 million. Despite outlining his perceived problems with the plan, however, Kyl said he could be persuaded to vote for an extension — but only if Democrats agreed to again extend the 2003 Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans:

KYL: It was part of an overall agreement in which we said we will extend all of the existing tax rates — the so-called Bush tax cuts, that is the rates that have been in effect since 2001 and 2003, we would extend this temporary tax holiday from the payroll tax cut, we would extend all of those. And I supported that. That frankly was the right thing to do, to extend all of these existing rates. … Now if we can do that again, I’m all for it. I’ll support the extension of the payroll tax holiday.

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The payroll tax cut extension as proposed by Democrats would ensure that, at a time when the middle- and working-classes are still inching toward recovery, the average household would pocket an extra $1,000 a year. Meanwhile, in Kyl’s home state of Arizona, the millionaires’ surtax used to pay for much of the extension would affect just 0.1 percent of all taxpayers — a whopping 3,173 people who bring home an average annual income of $3.5 million, according to a Citizens for Tax Justice analysis. And while proposals exist to pay for the extension, no such plan exists for the Bush tax cuts, despite a 10-year price tag topping $2.5 trillion and no meaningful job creation to show for the cost.

Kyl’s statement is a direct contradiction to comments he made just a year ago during debate about the Bush tax cuts. “My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut,” Kyl told reporters in July 2010. Now that it is a Democratic tax cut on the table, however, Kyl not only opposes the Democrats’ attempts to offset the costs, he wants to ensure that the middle class doesn’t get a tax cut unless the wealthiest Americans — whose tax rates are already at historic lows — get one too.

Last week, GOP presidential primary candidate Newt Gingrich appeared at Harvard to talk about his campaign. At the conclusion of his speech, he fielded questions from students that were recorded and uploaded to YouTube. One student asked the former House speaker about the pay gap between men and women. Gingrich completely dismissed this gap, saying that the student will soon be worried about male inequality instead because women are overtaking their counterparts:

STUDENT: Hi, Speaker, I’m Holly Flynn, a freshman at the college. Two details of your film really stood out to me. One was Phyllis Schlafly’s commentary. And the other was the characterization of women winning World War II as a negative image. So I’d like you to clarify your stance on womens’ rights. And I’d like to know what you’d do to ensure gender equality in the United States. Given that even today, women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar.

GINGRICH: Well, the latter is going to change dramatically in the next generation because more women are going to college than men. And they’re doing better than men and entering professions more than men. In fact, if anything, you’ll be here in fifteen years wondering what we’ll do about men inequality and male unemployment. Because the people who had the deepest decline of income are males who don’t go to college.

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There is a case to be made that, in some areas, women are now overtaking men — such as in college attendance. However, Gingrich is wrong to completely dismiss the wider issue of inequality that is keeping women from earning similar wages to their male counterparts. For one, college attendance is not the only factor that determines salaries. Women working in the exact same industries with the exact same jobs continue to be paid less than men, and even women working in the highest-paid jobs continue to earn less than men. And although Gingrich seems to point to the recession as lowering the pay gap between sexes, the pay gap has actually staganted during the poor economy. (HT: YouTube account TheAsianRepublican)