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DES MOINES, Iowa — Mitt Romney refused to be pinned down Wednesday on how Congress should break an impasse that threatens to raise taxes for 160 million workers. Rival Newt Gingrich, in contrast, castigated Congress for “an absurd dereliction of duty.”

“I’m not going to get into the back-and-forth on the congressional sausage-making process,” Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said in Keene, N.H., as the day began. “I hope they’re able to sit down and work out a solution that works for the American people. My hope is that the solution includes extension of the payroll-tax holiday.”

But Romney left open the terms for an extension, which is the crux of the stalled debate in Washington. He suggested the extension should last more than two months and ideally a year but called such details “deep in the weeds.”

In Iowa, Gingrich called a two-month extension “insufficient” and scolded the Democratic-controlled Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama’s administration for “lurching from failure to failure” and marveled: “They can’t figure out how to pass a one-year extension, so the Senate leaves town?”

“It’s game-playing,” added the former House speaker, who stopped short of criticizing House Republicans and their leader, Ohio Rep. John Boehner. Gingrich also did not criticize Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader from Kentucky who signed off on the short-term extension.