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The Senate released its bill Thursday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, but the bill also renews a host of more minor tax provisions aimed at winning over recalcitrant Democrats in the House and Senate. The bill, which faces its first key test vote Monday in the Senate, mirrors the deal that President Barack Obama struck earlier this week with Republicans. It extends the tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income, renews jobless benefits for one year and reinstates the estate tax at a level pushed by Republicans. But in the face of loud resistance from...

(This panel, these virtual outright threats to Obama occurred tonight on MSNBC's The Last Word, hosted by Lawrence O'Donnell, with panelists Rabbi Michael Lerner (Editor-Tikkun), Jane Hamsher, Ralph Nader, and Alan Grayson). Video - Denouncing the Tax Deal (MSNBC page under 'top video stories').

Washington Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA) and Jay Inslee (D-WA) do not want Speaker Pelosi to bring the tax rate compromise bill to the floor of the House for a vote. In short, the two Washington liberals want taxes raised on everyone because they object to upper income earners - the very earners who invest and start business that hire Washington workers - keeping some of their own money. Fox News reports the two members are working on a letter with Peter DeFazio (D-OR) to present to the House Democratic Caucus. The letter reportedly asks Pelosi to not bring the measure...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) on Wednesday came out against the tax-cut deal President Obama brokered with Republicans. The potential 2012 presidential candidate endorsed a Twitter post that applauded Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) criticism of the deal. "Thank you, @JimDeMint - DeMint comes out against tax deal, says GOP must do ‘better than this,'" reads the message from conservative commentator Jedediah Bila. Palin cannot vote on the deal, which is also unpopular with liberals, but she is a major voice within the Republican Party and arguably its most well-known member. Under the proposed compromise, all of the expiring Bush tax...

Harry Reid must be a political opportunist — excuse me, optimist. Where others see defeat, Reid sees a chance to win a hand or two for his casino backers in Nevada. Politico reports that Reid will attempt to attach a rider onto the Senate version of the tax deal reached by Barack Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill to legalize online poker in the US, with provisions that give gaming corporations a big head start: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to use the tax cut package President Barack Obama brokered with Republicans to legalize online poker, POLITICO has...

How angry has the professional Left become? Their oracle on MSNBC isn’t just warning that Barack Obama won’t get re-elected after cutting a deal with Republicans, but won’t even be on the ticket come November 2012. Keith Olbermann warned in his Special Comment last night that Obama won’t survive a primary challenge if he persists, because Democrats and progressives are wedded to principles, not personalities: Er, doesn’t the nomination of Obama in 2008 more or less rebut that notion? Obama didn’t offer any different rhetoric than did John Edwards did, or even Bill Richardson, who was a lot more experienced...

Moments ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist from Vermont, stopped by the Senate press gallery unannounced to deliver red-faced invective trashing the proposed tax deal between the White House and the GOP, apparently doubling down on his earlier threat to filibuster the plan. He said he is willing to do “anything and everything” to defeat the current proposal — which he called a “moral outrage” — and prevent a tax-rate extension for upper-income earners, by filibuster if necessary. Sanders said he was going to find “a handful of Republicans” willing to reject the current deal (he didn’t say whom...

Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who bucked his party leadership during the midterm elections, was back at it again Tuesday night, saying he would not vote for the tax cut deal brokered between the GOP and President Obama because it increases the deficit. “Most of us who ran this election said we were not going to vote for anything that increased the deficit. This does,” DeMint said, explaining his opposition to conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. It could be the beginning of the deal’s unraveling, if DeMint’s public break with the deal and with his party’s...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A testy President Barack Obama on Tuesday expressed frustration at his own Democrats for attacking him over his tax-cut deal with Republicans, who he called uncompromising "hostage takers." Obama found himself in an unusual position a day after sealing a major tax-cut agreement -- praised by Republican opponents and denounced by liberal Democrats who felt he violated a pledge that helped get him elected in 2008. Liberals accused him of caving to Republican demands by agreeing to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, even those for wealthier Americans, instead of their preference for limiting the tax cuts...

WASHINGTON – Facing a Democratic rebellion, President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans. "There are some who would have preferred a protracted political fight," the president said at a White House news conference a day after the deal was announced. "And I understand the desire for a fight. I'm sympathetic to that." But, he said, a long political battle "would be a bad deal for the economy. And it would be a bad deal for the American people." Still, he promised a fight during 2012,...

Remember we don't have a deal on taxes yet. We have a "framework" for a tax deal that needs to be scored by the CBO and then, of course, voted on. And there are definitely fears that the framework could be blown up by angry Democrats. Remember, the deal was cut between Obama and the GOP, without any real sign that Congressional Democrats played much of a role. So there are egoes to worry about. Sen. Dick Durbin, who voted for the Deficit Commission's recommendations, has already said Democrats could "walk out." Virginia Senator Mark Warner was on CNBC this...

It’s safe to say that no one on the Democratic side of the aisle took the news of the tax deal very well. Democrats in Congress took to the airwaves to blast Obama for reneging on his promise to end the signature Bush tax rates, such as Jim McDermott and Anthony Weiner: “This is the president’s Gettysburg,” Rep. Jim McDermott, a leading progressive and a subcommittee chairman on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told POLITICO Monday. Referring to Obama’s choice about whether to compromise or stand firm against Republicans on the question of higher taxes for the wealthy, the...

When President Bush and a Republican Congress cut income taxes for everyone who paid them, most Democrats were opposed. Once the legislation passed, though, they quickly realized that as a matter of politics they had to support the bulk of the tax cuts. They could not be seen to oppose the reduction in tax rates for middle-income workers, or the expansion of the child tax credit. They remained hostile, however, to the tax cuts on dividends, capital gains, and high incomes. They ran two presidential campaigns on a platform of extending the “good” tax cuts while letting the “bad” ones...

It's almost BEYOND Meltdown Mode. This has been coming on for a while now: The DUmmies' utter disappointment in their erstwhile true love, Barack Obama. And now with this betrayal on taxes, he's gone from Obamassiah to Judas Isbarryot. For the CENTERPIECE of the Obama campaign was his pledge to punish the rich by raising their taxes. But now. . . . Oh, well! So the DUmmies are beyond disenchantment. They are, in some sense, even beyond seething rage--they've been there for some time now. But this, what we saw today--this moves them into more of a settled opposition....