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Washington (CNN) -- The top Senate Republican offered a compromise solution Thursday to the current congressional standoff over how best to extend the expiring payroll tax cut, but his plan was met with resistance by House GOP leaders.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, urged House Republicans to support a short-term extension of the tax holiday -- similar to a two-month bipartisan measure passed overwhelmingly by the Senate and now demanded by both President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.
In return, McConnell pushed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to appoint conferees to a House-Senate conference committee to iron out differences between competing longer-term plans -- something requested by House Republicans.
"House Republicans sensibly want greater certainty about the duration of these provisions, while Senate Democrats want more time to negotiate the terms," McConnell said in a written statement. "These goals are not mutually exclusive. We can and should do both."
But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, pushed back, releasing a statement reiterating his call for negotiators to craft an immediate one-year tax cut extension -- something now considered unlikely by most congressional observers.
"We can do better," Boehner said shortly before McConnell unveiled his proposal. "It's time for us to sit down and have a serious negotiation and solve this problem."
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, insisted differences between competing 12-month plans could probably be resolved "within an hour."
The latest maneuvering occurred against the backdrop of mounting pressure across the political spectrum for House Republicans to drop their opposition to the Senate's bipartisan two-month deal -- an issue many in the GOP fear is damaging the party's anti-tax reputation heading into the 2012 campaign.
Pushed by his conservative, tea-party infused House GOP caucus, Boehner continues to insist that anything short of an immediate one-year extension of the tax holiday will only create more economic instability and do little to generate job growth.
Obama reiterated his position in a phone call with Boehner Thursday morning, stating that the House should pass the Senate's two-month extension. Obama told Boehner he is "committed to begin working immediately on a full-year agreement once the House passes the bipartisan Senate compromise," according to a White House statement.
The president is also scheduled to appear with a group of middle-class Americans Thursday as part of a White House attempt to illustrate the impact on 160 million American workers if the tax holiday ends December 31. The typical worker's take home salary will shrink by about $40 per pay period without the tax cut, or $1,000 annually.
Also at stake: extended emergency federal unemployment benefits and the so-called "doc fix," a delay in scheduled pay cuts to Medicare physicians.
Both of those measures, along with the tax holiday, are currently scheduled to expire in nine days.
All top Democrats and Republicans now publicly agree on the need for a one-year extension, but critics of the House GOP's stance insist a two-month extension is necessary to give negotiators more time to hammer out a deal over how to pay for the continuation. They accuse House Republicans of creating the very instability they have railed against, and of needlessly creating yet another congressional crisis at the end of a year filled with Capitol Hill showdowns.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee, strongly criticized the House GOP's stance on CNN's "American Morning" Thursday.
"The Republicans are losing this fight. We need to get back on track," McCain said. "A thousand dollars a year is a big amount of money to most Americans, and I think it's very important. ... I worry about the fact that we are continuing to increase the debt and the deficit, but now it's become very symbolic, and I think it has to be done."
The Wall Street Journal -- a critical sounding board for conservatives -- blasted Boehner and his House GOP colleagues in an editorial Wednesday, arguing that they had "achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter."
"At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly," the paper's editorial writers said.
A Senate GOP leadership aide told CNN Wednesday that House Republicans had "painted themselves into a corner."
"This is a lose-lose situation for us. (House Republicans) let the Democrats get the messaging advantage and, more specifically, we've turned one of our key issues on its head," the aide said. "The Republicans look like they are the ones blocking tax relief."
"When you are arguing process, you are losing, by definition," the aide added. "We are arguing process while they've got politics on their side."
Despite mounting pressure on House Republicans to give in and pass the $33 billion Senate bill, a well-placed House GOP source indicated Wednesday that his side would not consider an end-game to the standoff until next week, just days before the December 31 deadline.
Numerous Senate Republicans have indicated they feel politically undercut by their House colleagues. On Saturday, the Senate voted 89-10 -- with overwhelming GOP support -- to approve two additional months for all three programs.
The House GOP caucus, however, revolted against that blueprint, calling it an inadequate patchwork plan. On Tuesday, the House voted 229-193 on a virtual party-line basis to express its disagreement with the Senate bill and call for the creation of a House-Senate conference committee to resolve the matter -- something previously ruled out by Reid.
The House also approved a separate resolution supporting a year-long extension of both the payroll tax cut and emergency unemployment benefits, along with a new, two-year doc fix.
Further complicating matters is the fact that the Senate has adjourned for the year. Most House members also left Washington after Tuesday's vote.
A number of Republicans have said the party should have declared victory after winning an agreement by Obama -- as part of the payroll tax cut package -- to make a decision within the next 60 days on whether to proceed with the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans and some Democratic union leaders say the controversial pipeline will create thousands of new jobs; critics question its environmental impact.
A failure to act could have major political fallout. Numerous observers believe Obama is preparing to parrot Harry Truman's 1948 campaign next year by running against an unpopular, dysfunctional Congress controlled partly by the GOP.
CNN's Ted Barrett, Dana Bash, Kate Bolduan, Lisa Desjardins, Matt Hoye, Xuan Thai, and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.
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