WASHINGTON -- The United States House of Representatives passed a bill undoing income tax increases for more than 99% of households, giving a victory to President Barack Obama even as Republicans vowed to fight him in coming weeks to get spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
The 257-167 vote, on Tuesday night (US time), capped a tension-filled day as Republicans balked at a bipartisan Senate measure. House Speaker John Boehner ordered a vote even though 151 of 236 Republicans, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor, ultimately voted no. Mr Obama said he would sign the bill into law.
"The deficit needs to be reduced in a way that's balanced," Mr Obama said at the White House. He said he wants top earners and corporations to pay even more and that Congress must raise the debt ceiling. "Everyone pays their fair share. Everyone does their part," he said.
The final days of the drama surrounding the so-called fiscal cliff of scheduled tax increases and spending cuts illustrated the partisan struggle that has made US budget policy unpredictable and prone to crises as deadlines approach. Mr Obama wielded the leverage he gained in his Nov 6 re-election, securing most of the tax increases he sought without sacrificing the spending he had offered to Republicans in hopes of a larger deficit-reduction grand bargain.
The United States Capitol stands in Washington, DC, on Monday, Dec 31, 2012. (Bloomberg photo)
Debt Ceiling
Republicans immediately turned to their next battle -- a bid to use the need to raise the country's US$16.4 trillion debt ceiling to force Obama to accept cuts in entitlement programs such as Medicare. Congress must act as early as mid-February to prevent a default and the dispute may reprise a similar 2011 episode that led to a downgrade of the US credit rating.
"Without meaningful reform of entitlements, real spending controls, and a fairer, cleaner tax code, our debt will continue to grow, and our economy will continue to stumble," Mr Boehner said in a statement after the vote.
Mr Obama said he is "very open to compromise." Medicare spending can be reduced, he said, yet "we can't simply cut our way to prosperity."
Asian stocks climbed and the yen fell. The MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index climbed 1.7% at 12.22pm in Hong Kong. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index was 1.2% higher and South Korea's Kospi index added 1.5%. Equity markets in Japan and mainland China are closed. The yen tumbled 1.1% to 115.73 per euro and the Dollar Index, which tracks six peers, fell 0.4%.
Payroll Taxes
The largest economic impact of the budget accord will come from ending a two-percentage-point payroll tax cut, a move that will shrink paychecks for US workers immediately even as most income tax cuts that expired Dec 31 are being extended permanently.
The payroll cut's lapse will pull more than $100 billion out of the economy in 2013 and is the primary reason why 77.1% of US households will face higher taxes this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Centre in Washington.
The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday almost unraveled a bipartisan agreement brokered over the waning days of 2012 by Vice President Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader. The Senate passed that bill 89-8 in the first hours of Jan 1. On Tuesday night's House vote, 85 Republicans and 172 Democrats voted for the measure while 16 Democrats and 151 Republicans opposed it.
Tax Increases
Compared with continuing 2012 policies, the agreement would increase taxes by $620 billion over the next decade, according to the White House. The federal budget will be $4 trillion bigger than projected had all the scheduled tax boosts been retained.
Republicans claimed a victory because the bill ends the temporary nature of most of the tax cuts that President George W Bush campaigned on in 2000 and were scheduled to lapse at the end of 2010 and then again in 2012.
"We're making permanent tax policies Republicans originally crafted," said Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
In addition to tax increases on top earners, the bill extends expanded unemployment benefits and continues refundable tax credits for low-income families and college students. It would also delay by two months automatic cuts scheduled to start this month, offsetting the $24 billion cost with a blend of additional revenue and spending reductions, half of which would come from defense.
'More Spending'
"It's unbelievable that what you see in there is more spending as opposed to less spending," said Rob Woodall, a Georgia Republican, about the Senate-passed bill.
Mr Boehner put the bipartisan Senate compromise to an up-or- down vote last night after it became clear that he could not add spending cuts with Republican votes alone, especially with fewer than two days before the new Congress takes office.
This episode demonstrated again the fractiousness of House Republicans, who passed bills in 2012 to extend the expiring tax cuts for all income levels and replace the automatic spending cuts with other policies.
They eventually ceded control of the fiscal-cliff debate to the administration and the Senate. Mr Boehner could not reach an agreement with Mr Obama and he could not get House Republicans to back a plan that set the threshold for tax increases at $1 million in income.
Priorities Ignored
Instead, at the last minute, he was forced to accept a deal that contained few of the Republican priorities he could have gotten by accepting what Mr Obama was offering on Dec 17.
Mr Boehner's recent difficulty in getting his members to follow his recommendations "all rolls off his back" because "he feels pretty confident about his leadership, about the strength of his leadership," said Florida Republican Rich Nugent, a first-year House member.
Mr Boehner is not "looking over his back and worried about it, at least he doesn't exhibit that to us," Mr Nugent said.
Nor should Mr Boehner be worried about challenges to his speakership, said Mr Nugent, a former sheriff.
"Having been a chief executive, there's always people who agree and disagree with your leadership," he said.
The bill would reinstate tax cuts that expired Dec 31 on taxable income of individuals up to $400,000 and of married couples of up to $450,000, leaving those top earners with a marginal tax rate of 39.6%, up from 35% in 2012.
Carried Interest
Those same households would pay higher tax rates on their dividends and capital gains, including private-equity managers' carried-interest income. The top rate will go to 23.8%, including taxes from the 2010 health-care law that took effect on Tuesday.
Many households with incomes above $500,000 will not face the higher rates at all, because deductions are subtracted from gross income before the rates are assessed.
Limits on itemised deductions and personal exemptions will also return, starting at $250,000 of income for individuals and $300,000 for married couples.
The deal would set the top estate-tax rate at 40%, splitting the difference between the parties’ positions. The per-person exemption will be more than $5 million and indexed for inflation.
Biggest Burden
The burden of higher taxes will fall hardest on the top 1% and particularly on the top 0.1% of taxpayers. Those making more than $2.7 million will pay an average of $443,910 more in 2013, or 26% of the additional burden, according to the Tax Policy Centre. Households with income between $500,000 and $1 million will pay an average of $14,812 more.
Miscellaneous tax breaks will get extended through 2013, including the production tax credit for wind energy and the tax credit for corporate research.
The boundaries of the fiscal debate have shifted repeatedly since Congress began focusing on deficit reduction in 2010.
Lawmakers missed an opportunity to use the fiscal cliff they created to force themselves to act, said Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairmen of Mr Obama's 2010 fiscal panel.
"Even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster, Washington still could not forge a common-sense bipartisan consensus on a plan that stabilizes the debt," they said in a statement.
Democrats Recover
What is happening instead is deficit-reduction achieved in fits and starts. Democrats see a multi-stage game where they lost badly in 2011 and have now recovered their footing to insist on pairing tax increases with spending cuts.
In 2011, using the debt ceiling as leverage, Republicans got Obama to agree to more than $1 trillion in spending cuts plus another $1.2 trillion still set to start this year.
A 2011 deficit-reduction supercommittee deadlocked, pushing the issue into the 2012 election. Democrats were able to prevail only after Mr Obama won a second term campaigning on tax increases, while Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate.
Republicans, particularly in the House, want to insist on spending cuts at every turn. Although they failed in this round, they drove that argument in last year's debt-ceiling fight, and they'll replay it in the next few weeks.
The US hit the debt limit Dec 31 and the Treasury Department began employing so-called extraordinary measures to finance about $200 billion in deficits in 2013.
A debt limit increase will be needed as early as mid-February, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and the automatic spending cuts will start taking effect March 1.
On Monday night Mr Obama said he will not "have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up."
Republicans want to replay their demand that debt limit increases be matched dollar-for-dollar with spending cuts.
Mr Obama said he wants future deficit-reduction deals to feature a "balanced" approach that includes spending cuts and further tax increases.