Senate leadership staff is ‘feeling positive’ that the controversial tax cut deal worked out between President Obama and Republican leaders to extend the Bush tax cuts while providing for unemployment insurance will get the 60 votes required for cloture today.
Voting is expected to begin around 3 PM here in Washington, with the window remaining open through 5:30-6:00 to allow west coast Senators time to cast their votes after returning from the weekend.
A successful cloture vote will open up 30 hours of debate on the measure, ending in a final vote that will then send the tax cut compromise to the House if it passes. Though there’s expected to be opposition in the Senate, the real fireworks will be in the House, where a majority of the Democratic caucus called on their colleagues to reject the compromise last week.
Passage in the House then, it seems, hinges on a coalition of conservative Democrats and “establishment” Republicans. Like the Democrats, the GOP is facing opposition to the compromise from its more purist elements.
The White House says the compromise package was designed to extend the Bush tax cuts on the middle class and unemployment benefits despite Republican opposition to anything that didn’t extend all the Bush tax cuts, including those on the highest income brackets. So if the deal survives the Senate in the next couple of days, what the House does to it when the bill lands there could determine whether tax cuts can really get done this week as leadership wants. Republicans have refused to allow any other legislation to go forward until the tax cuts are done.
