Posted on 12/16/2010 9:30:45 PM PST by Second Amendment First
The House late Thursday gave final approval, 277-148, to a temporary extension of the George W. Bush-era tax rates, delivering a significant but politically bruising victory to President Obama.
The $858 billion legislation now heads to the president’s desk for his signature. It extends the Bush tax cuts across the board for two years, slashes the employee payroll tax by 2 percent for one year, renews the estate tax and extends unemployment insurance benefits for 13 months.
The president argued the deal was the best he could get from Republicans who refused to budge on extending tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans, which Democrats wanted to end. The action by Congress prevents a broad tax increase from taking effect when the current rates expire at the end of the year.
The last votes Thursday capped a fractious three-week debate after Obama abandoned his Democratic allies in the House to cut a deal with Senate Republicans. House Democrats revolted over the pact, decrying the president for capitulating on one of his party’s signature domestic priorities: ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
“This basically concedes the argument to the supply-side Republican failed economic policies,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said.
Other Democrats denounced the bill for exploding an already soaring federal budget deficit. “Wake up and listen to the sirens,” Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) said on the House floor. “I can’t believe you talk about this bill as fiscal sanity. It’s fiscal insanity.”
The House Democratic Caucus held a non-binding vote to reject the Obama-GOP deal a week ago, but within days the Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill and Pelosi moved ahead with a vote.
House liberals made one last stand on Thursday, forcing the Speaker to pull the tax bill from the floor for several hours because of objections to the amendment process.
While the Democratic leadership decided to allow one attempt to amend the Republican-favored estate tax provision in the Senate-passed bill, liberals complained that the procedure party leaders crafted would not have allowed them to register their objections directly on the legislation.
“The original rule did not allow members to have a clean up-or-down vote on the bill,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said.
After a huddle with members on the House floor and a hastily scheduled meeting in her office, Pelosi agreed to rework the process, allowing separate votes on the estate tax amendment and the underlying legislation.
Pelosi herself did not lobby members on the tax bill, leaving the White House to rally support for a deal it alone had negotiated with Republicans. Vice President Biden delivered a personal pitch to House Democrats, and Obama called lawmakers himself in the days leading up to the vote.
And while lawmakers predicted the Senate bill would pass once it came to a vote in the House, the Obama administration was concerned enough to whip votes against the estate tax amendment in the final hours, a House leadership aide said, not wanting a last-minute change to send the legislation back to the Senate and unravel the accord.
House Republicans broadly backed the measure, some of them reluctantly. Like many other GOP lawmakers, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said he wanted to see the tax rates extended permanently, but his top priority was preventing a tax hike on January 1. “In this legislation I see the glass half-full,” he said on the floor. He acknowledged conservatives who said the GOP could have held out for a better deal. But he concluded: “Personally I am not willing to take a chance. I am going cast the aye vote. I am going to stop the job killing tax increases.”
In a floor speech Thursday night, Pelosi endorsed the estate tax amendment but pointedly refused to explicitly back the underlying bill. The GOP-favored inheritance tax of 35% for individuals worth more than $5 million, the Speaker said, “is not good policy. It does have not have a favorable impact on the deficit. It does not create jobs, It does not grow the economy.”
As to the overhaul compromise, Pelosi said, “Members will have to make their own decisions.”
“I applaud President Obama for his side of the ledger,” Pelosi said. “I’m sorry the price that had to be paid for it is so high.”
What have they done? They just don’t hear the people...
Now Obama will take credit for this as HIS tax cuts but this will go down in history as the largest stimulus ever done and it will add yet ANOTHER TRILLION to our debt...
What are they thinking?
I shook his hand at a book signing here in Phoenix last week. It was awesome and memorable. Brought back to mind that old saying about not missing what you had-until you don’t have it any longer.
Can the next Congress, successfully, fix things and greatly improve things, for the long-term future of the U.S.? A question very similar to my, still, used tagline.
We are sorry that the free world paid such a terrible price for supporting this madman in the White House.
Precisely. Bush won the tax policy debate. 100%.
“We already tried cutting taxes and that didn’t work.....”
That is exactly how they will spin it and, I believe, this is what they are counting on. However, I have faith in the American people...most of them, anyway.
We aren’t idiots...even those who aren’t political junkies know when someone is trying to make a bad situation worse.
This would be that time...and this repulsive bill wouldn’t have had a prayer without Republican votes.
Elections matter..........we won..........pfft.
Michele Bachmann and Joe Wilson vote NO!
It’s all the other things in the bill such as extending unemployment 13 weeks that is so horrible!!
He's toast.
How is this a victory for 0bama when he wanted to soak the “rich”?
Politics make the strangest of bedfellows.
And America loses. And not because of extending the taxcuts, but because of all the other garbage that is in this bill.
Frank and Fudge voted NO. Why does he get two votes?
Pence also voted NO.
Technically, the bill originated in the House, which passed the Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010. That House bill was then taken up by the Senate, which amended it to (i) eliminate all of the airport language and (ii) add all of the income-tax rate, estate tax, social security tax and unemployment paymeng language. The bill then went back to the House, which last night voted to approve the Senate amendment that did all that.
So, due to this shell game, the link showing how everyone voted last night did not have the incorrect bill name, and the tax bill did “originate” in the House as required by the Constitution.
You mean 13 months. I would prefer it to be 13 weeks! I sure do hope that decent welfare reforms will be created, by the next Congress and beyond! Welfare reforms that encourage ALL ABLE BODIED PEOPLE HERE LEGALLY to go back to work asap are, still, very desperately, needed!
...it does not outright mug families with small businesses and farm any more than about 1 out of every 3 dollars they are passing on to their children. It is still OUTRAGEOUS.
Barry threatened her with a bucket of water to get her to say that.
Since when does taxes cause deficits you dimwits?? What about SPENDING? GOT IT NOW? or do you need another dose of voter anger in 2012?
The first post that gets it. This was/is a trap and the stupid GOP fell for it. We need actual cuts not this extension.
Going into my self-managed Roth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.