After stalling in the afternoon, the U.S. House voted just after midnight Friday to extend tax cuts initially backed by George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 for all Americans. The bill, which also extends jobless benefits, now moves to President Barack Obamas desk.
While the tax cuts extension passed the Senate Wednesday with 81 votes, its fate in the House seemed uncertain Thursday afternoon. Some congressional Democrats, unhappy with the fact that highest-earning Americans were getting the extension, held it up. The measure finally passed late Thursday on a 277-148 vote, with a coalition of 139 Democrats and 138 Republicans backing it.
Despite the bipartisan coalition, the two sides took shots at each other.
Herewe are with a bill on one side of the ledger that benefits 155 million Americans, said U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. We have tax cuts for the middle class across the board.Everybody gets that tax cut.But in order for the middle class to get that tax cut, the Republicans insist that those who make the top 2 percent in our country, that they get an extra tax cut adding billions of dollars to the deficit and not creating any jobs.
With nearly one in 10 Americans out of work, acting to ensure no Americans taxes go up on Jan. 1 was critically important, said Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who will take the gavel from Pelosi in January. Failing to stop all the tax hikes would have destroyed more jobs and deepened the uncertainty in our economy.Stopping all the tax hikes is a good first step in our efforts to reduce the uncertainty family-owned small businesses are facing, but much more needs to be done, including cutting spending, permanently eliminating the threat of job-killing tax hikes, and repealing the job-killing health care law. These are critical priorities the new majority has pledged to act on in the next Congress, and I hope President Obama will listen to the American people and work with us to stop Washingtons job-killing policies.
Both the Democratic and Republican representatives from Florida were divided.
Sunshine State Republicans Ginny Brown-Waite, Vern Buchanan, Ander Crenshaw, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, John Mica, Jeff Miller, Bill Posey, Adam Putnam, Tom Rooney, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Cliff Stearns voted to back the extension. Two Florida Republicans -- Gus Bilirakis and Connie Mack -- voted against it. Bill Young did not vote.
On the Democratic side, Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch, Ron Klein, Suzanne Kosmas, Kendrick Meek and Debbie Wasserman Schultz voted for the measures. Allen Boyd, Corrine Brown, Alan Grayson and Alcee Hastings voted against them.
Mack voted against the measures but filed his own bill on Thursday to make the tax cuts permanent.
President Obamas solution to tax relief is far from permanent, said Mack. It adds tens of billions of dollars in new spending with minimal offsets and does nothing to bring the needed certainty to the marketplace.
We should make tax relief permanent, added Mack. All the rest of the political junk in this legislation is simply Washington playing games with peoples lives and livelihoods games which the American people demanded an end to on Nov. 2.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
