From the Associated Press:
President Barack Obama signed into law a huge, holiday-season tax bill extending cuts for all Americans on Friday, saluting a new spirit of political compromise as Republicans applauded and liberals seethed. The benefits range from tax cuts for millionaires and the middle class to longer-term help for the jobless.
The most significant tax legislation in nearly a decade will avert big increases that would have hit millions of people starting in two weeks on New Year’s Day. Declared Obama: “We are here with some good news for the American people this holiday season.”
“This is progress and that’s what they sent us here to achieve,” Obama said as a rare bipartisan assembly of lawmakers looked on at the White House.
The package retains Bush-era tax rates for all taxpayers, including the wealthiest Americans, a provision Obama and congressional liberals opposed. It also offers 13 months of extended benefits to the unemployed and attempts to stimulate the economy with a Social Security payroll tax cut for all workers.
At a cost of $858 billion over two years, the deal contains provisions dear to both Democrats and Republicans. It represents the most money that Obama was likely to have been able to dedicate over the next year to the slowly recovering economy. Yet it also increases the federal deficit at a time when the country is growing increasingly anxious about the red ink.
Dramatic both as an economic and a political accomplishment, the agreement sets the stage for Obama’s new relationship with Congress in the aftermath of a midterm election wave that devastated Democrats and stripped them of control of the House.
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