With historic tax increases set to hit virtually every American in five days, President Obama and members of the Senate are headed back to Washington on Thursday to take one last shot at a deal to protect taxpayers and the gathering economic recovery.

If anything, hope for success appeared to have dimmed over the Christmas holiday. The Republican-controlled House last week abdicated responsibility for resolving the crisis, leaving all eyes on the Senate. But senior aides in both parties said Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have not met or even spoken since leaving town for the weekend.

One small sign of progress came from House GOP leaders, who vowed Wednesday to call the House into session and stage a vote on anything the Democratic-controlled Senate approved.

But Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other top Republicans also demanded that Senate leaders take up a bill approved by the House months ago that would preserve expiring tax cuts for the wealthy as well as the middle class.

After failing to persuade their fellow Republicans last week to let taxes rise on income over $1 million, GOP leaders offered no guidance on the shape of a package the House could ultimately accept. “The House will take . . . action on whatever the Senate can pass, but the Senate first must act,” the leaders said in a joint statement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-and-senators-returning-to-washington-for-one-last-fiscal-cliff-effort/2012/12/26/864e1f36-4f98-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_print.html

HAVE THE NATION’S LEADERS ever seemed smaller? It’s hard to remember when.

Unable to do what they all understood needed to be done, they created last year a congressional “supercommittee” that was meant to function as Congress had ceased to function. To guarantee its success, they established a fail-safe mechanism: a series of spending cuts that would take effect in event of failure that were so onerous that no patriot could contemplate their realization.

The supercommittee failed in the fall of 2011. Congress and President Obama essentially took the next year off to run for reelection. And then, as the fail-safe mechanism loomed, and scheduled tax increases threatened to send the nation reeling back into recession, the leaders failed to rise to the moment they had created for themselves. Instead of crafting a bargain that could set the nation on a steadier fiscal course, they jockeyed to ensure that their political opponents would bear the public ire when things went sour. That’s how small politicians behave.

We understand that the two parties have starkly different understandings of the role government should play in U.S. society. They’ve been fighting to defend those visions, and they will continue to do so. That’s as it should be.

Meanwhile, interest groups on both sides create a toxic environment for politicians who understand that compromise also will be needed. Whether it’s the no-tax puritans on the right or the hands-off-entitlements zealots on the left, the groups thrive in an atmosphere of maximum confrontation. Over time they help elect politicians who share their purity of vision — who believe that compromise is a betrayal of the voters who sent them to Washington.

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See toon at top...

The House late Tuesday gave final approval to a Senate-backed bill that will let taxes rise for the richest Americans, shield the middle class from tax hikes and extend emergency unemployment benefits, ending Washington’s long drama over the “fiscal cliff.”

The dramatic vote followed a wild day in which the critical measure was assumed for several hours to be headed for defeat because of widespread Republican objections. The vote was 257 to 167, with 85 Republicans joining with nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats.

Before the vote, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) urged his colleagues to vote for the bill “not as a Democrat, not as a Republican, but as an American who understands that our people believe that action is necessary.’’ Yet he expressed some of the reluctance lawmakers on both sides felt over a compromise that seemed to fully please no one.

“I severely regret that this is not a big, bold and balanced plan,” Hoyer said. “We had an opportunity to reach such an agreement in a bipartisan fashion. And we will not reach a big, bold, balanced plan without bipartisanship, because the decisions we’ll have to make will be too difficult not to do in a bipartisan fashion.”
Earlier, in a closed-door meeting with Republican lawmakers, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had outlined options for handling the bill, including a proposal to satisfy conservatives by tacking on billions of dollars in new spending cuts.

But the leaders warned that the Senate was unlikely to approve any changes to the carefully calibrated compromise and that a vote to amend the measure probably would leave the nation facing historic tax increases for virtually every American — and force House Republicans to take the blame.

The other option: Let the measure pass the House unchanged and go to the White House for President Obama’s signature. Late Tuesday, it appeared that even some of the chamber’s staunchest conservatives were ready to give up the fight.

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