The Slatest

In a brief address Tuesday night, President Obama saluted the passage of a fiscal cliff deal that the White House had negotiated with the Senate. Then he fired a warning shot at Congressional Republicans, saying he won't tolerate another down-to-the-wire battle over the debt ceiling this spring.

"I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they've already racked up," he said. "If Congress refuses to give the U.S. government the ability to repay these bills on time, the consequences for the global economy would be catastrophic—far worse than a fiscal cliff."

He concluded by calling for a 2013 marked by "a little bit less drama, a little bit less brinksmanship," and suggested the government "not scare the heck out of folks quite as much" the next time it has a major fiscal debate.

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner released a statement saying, "Now the focus turns to cutting spending."

UPDATE: Putting away the brinkmanship, the House of Representatives voted 257-167 on Tuesday night to approve the Senate's fiscal cliff bill, putting the measure on President Obama's desk. The president is expected to speak on the legislation at 11:20 p.m. eastern.

The bill passed even though the majority of House Republicans voted against it, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Speaker John Boehner ultimately voted in favor, after agreeing with Cantor earlier in the day that he was concerned about the lack of spending cuts in the deal. (More on the deal's contents here.) Here's the partisan breakdown, via Politico:

Republicans: 85 yes, 151 no

Democrats: 172 yes, 16 no

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 3:56 p.m.: Oh boy. Reports out of Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon are that House Republicans, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are leaning toward amending the Senate's fiscal cliff bill to add spending cuts. In other words, by the time the markets open Wednesday, we could be hurtling down the cliff after all.

Here are a few of the warning signs:

• "The lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today’s meeting," said Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper, according to a tweet from the Weekly Standard's John McCormack
  
• A Boehner spokesman is now saying the same thing, according to TPM's Sahil Kapur
  
• House Finance Chair Spencer Bachus,* R-Alabama, said he would be "shocked" if the bill isn't sent back to the Senate with amendments, according to Business Insider's Grace Wyler
  
• "When you talk about balance, you've got to provide responsible spending restraint for the long term. This bill doesn't have that," Rep. Nan Hayworth, R-New York, told CBS News' Stephanie Condon on her way out of a Republican meeting

All of which makes Obama's declaration of victory earlier Tuesday look either naive or extremely canny, depending on how you interpret its intent.

*Correction: This post originally misspelled Spencer Bachus's last name.

President Obama is casting the fiscal cliff deal as a fulfillment of his campaign pledge to ask for more in taxes from the wealthiest 2 percent, while Mitch McConnell is boasting that 99 percent of his constituents won’t be hit with tax increases. How can that be? As with so much in the fiscal cliff—er, fiscal crisis—negotiations, it’s a matter of semantics. The top income tax rate will rise only on households earning $450,000 or more, but those earning more than $250,000 will see some loopholes phased out, so they’ll end up paying more as well.

To simplify matters a bit, here is a rundown of some of the agreement’s key specifics, as reported by the Washington Post and others:

Taxes

• For couples earning more than $450,000 (or individuals earning more than $400,000), Bush-era tax cuts will expire, and the top income tax rate will rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent
• For couples earning less than $250,000 (or individuals earning less than $200,000), Bush-era tax cuts will be made permanent
• For households earning between those two figures, some exemptions and deductions will expire
• Investment taxes and estate taxes will rise, though with big exemptions
• Stimulus tax credits for college tuition and the working poor will be extended for five years
• Benefits for the long-term unemployed will be extended for one year
• The alternative minimum tax will not go into effect for some 30 million taxpayers, but the payroll tax cut will expire, hitting most taxpayers
• Some stimulus tax credits for businesses, including in the renewable energy sector, will be extended for one year

Revenues

• The deal will raise about $600 billion over the next decade compared to a pre-fiscal cliff baseline, less than the $1.6 trillion* Obama first sought
• Compared to a post-fiscal cliff baseline, meanwhile, the deal is a huge tax cut that will slash revenue by some $3.7 trillion

Spending cuts

• Sequestered cuts to defense and other budgets will be delayed two months, with a plan to replace them with equal measures of targeted cuts and revenue increases

Miscellaneous

• Doctors who provide Medicare won’t face scheduled pay cuts
• A nine-month farm bill fix will avoid the “dairy cliff”
• Congress will have its pay frozen again

So: You say 2 percent, I say 1 percent. You say tax hike, I say tax cut. But let’s not call the whole thing off.

Note: This post was adapted from a previous Slatest post, available here.

*Correction: This post originally misstated the amount of the revenue increase Obama had initially sought. It was $1.6 trillion, not $1.6 billion.

UPDATE: Shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday, the Senate voted 89-8 to approve a deal meant to address the tax hikes and spending cuts that technically went into effect at midnight, when the government sailed over the fiscal cliff. The deal now moves to the House of Representatives for action, perhaps as early as Tuesday afternoon. But House Republicans could still torpedo the agreement with amendments, Politico points out.

The eight senators who voted against the deal include Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa and Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida. Here's the full roll call.

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 12:15 a.m.: We just went over the fiscal cliff, but we did it with a deal in hand.

The Senate is set to vote after midnight on a compromise package that would raise taxes on the nation's top earners while preventing most tax hikes on the middle class, Politico reports. The deal, brokered largely by Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, was announced around 9 p.m. Monday, three hours before the deadline. But it didn’t pass either the Senate or the House before midnight, meaning that the dreaded cocktail of tax increases and spending cuts that was meant to spook legislators into striking a long-term budget deal did in fact take effect with the New Year, at least technically. The goal now will be to officially undo many of those provisions before they actually bite.

A rundown of the agreement's key provisions is here.* For details on how the deal transpired, check out the Washington Post’s full piece. For a reverse chronology of how the story shifted throughout the day, read on.

*Note: This post has been edited for clarity and length, with details of Monday night's deal removed and adapted for a separate post.

Monday, Dec 31, 4:45 p.m.: Look out below. House Republicans on Monday said they would adjourn for the day without voting on a potential Senate deal to avert the multiple whammy of middle-class tax hikes and wide-ranging spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff, according to the Huffington Post's Sam Stein and others.

Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are still widely reported to be trying to hammer out an agreement for Senate approval by day's end. But they aren't there yet, and House leaders apparently concluded that it wasn't worth waiting around any longer.

If there's any positive to be taken from Congress's depressing yet thoroughly unsurprising failure to take care of its business by the deadline, it's that a few House Republicans may find it easier to swallow a deal tomorrow than today. That's because, beginning tomorrow, taxes will have already gone up—so politicians might be able to claim that they're voting for tax cuts rather than hikes, according to CNN.

Monday, Dec. 31, 2:23 p.m.: What a letdown. In an address that some had dared to hope might herald an imminent deal on the fiscal cliff, President Obama instead contented himself with lobbing a couple of barbs at Congress and restating what we already knew.

"It appears that an agreement is in sight ... but it is not done," Obama reported in a press conference at the White House on Monday afternoon. "There are still issues to resolve, but we're hopeful that Congress can get it done."

Obama sketched the outlines of a potential deal that he said would stave off a scheduled middle-class tax hike while also extending tax credits for families with children, tuition tax credits, unemployment insurance, and tax credits for clean-energy spending. He said turning off the sequester—preventing a series of broad spending cuts scheduled to go into effect tomorrow if a deal is not reached—remained "a piece of business that still has to be taken care of."

He heralded the extension of the middle-class tax cuts as a significant victory, noting that it had been his top priority. "The last thing folks like the folks up here on this stage can afford right now is to pay an extra $2,000 in taxes next year," he said, gesturing to some middle-class Americans who had been trotted out for the occasion.

He did not specify the income threshold above which the Bush-era tax cuts would be allowed to expire. Reports have pegged the figure under discussion at $450,000 for families.

Obama said his preference would have been a larger and more lasting agreement, but added, "with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time." Instead, he said he was resigned to solving the country's budget problems "in stages." As for today, he said he doesn't expect anyone to be able to go home early with a deal in hand. "One thing we can count on with respect to this Congress is that if there's even one second left before you have to do what you're supposed to do, they're gonna take that second."

Monday, Dec. 31, 11:02 a.m.: Joe Biden to the rescue? Fiscal cliff talks have taken on new life since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appealed to the veep to step in for Harry Reid on the Democrats' side Sunday afternoon, Politico reports. The pair, who served 23 years together in the Senate, were on the phone past midnight Sunday night, then back on the horn at 6:30 a.m. Monday, with the Senate scheduled to reconvene at 11 a.m.

With a "grand bargain" long dead, Biden and McConnell are said to be pushing toward a stopgap that could raise taxes on families with incomes above of $450,000, while extending tax cuts for those below the threshold. That would mark a significant compromise between the $250,000 threshold that Obama has pushed for and the Republicans' longtime no-tax-hike stance.

The deal would delay across-the-board spending cuts by three months, according to ABC News' Jonathan Karl, setting up another confrontation in March. That may sound depressing, but in Washington today, kicking the can is what passes for success. Of course, any agreement will still need to pass the House before the ball drops on Times Square if the cliff is to be averted.

UPDATE: Now can we all agree she wasn't faking it? Hillary Clinton's doctors on Monday released a brief statement describing the secretary of state's blood clot. Here's the full text, via CNN:

"In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established. In all other aspects of her recovery, the Secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

- Dr. Lisa Bardack, Mt. Kisco Medical Group, and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi, George Washington University

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman has echoed John Kerry and others in asserting that Clinton will testify on the Benghazi attacks once she's better, Talking Points Memo reports. John Bolton, Allen West, and other conservatives have insinuated in recent weeks that Clinton faked her ailments to avoid exactly that.

Monday, Dec. 31, 9:21 a.m.: Hillary Clinton’s run of ill health continued on Sunday as she was hospitalized with a blood clot discovered in a follow-up exam related to the concussion she suffered earlier this month. The concussion came after she fainted from dehydration while battling a stomach virus.

Doctors at New York Presbyterian Hospital had the secretary of state on blood-thinning medications Monday. She was expected to stay through Tuesday so they could monitor her condition, according to a statement from aide Philippe Reines.

Clinton has not been seen in public since early December, the Washington Post notes. She has canceled an overseas trip, missed her scheduled testimony on the Benghazi attack, and was not in attendance on Dec. 21 when President Obama nominated John Kerry to succeed her as secretary of state. It's not yet clear how the blood clot will affect Kerry's confirmation, which some Republicans have vowed to block until Clinton testifies on Benghazi.

George H.W. Bush is on the mend, but a famous German newspaper mistakenly bumped him off on Sunday, briefly publishing online an unfinished obituary of America's 41st president.

The mistake came after an editor at Der Spiegel apparently misconstrued a Bush family spokesperson's statement that the 88-year-old had been moved out of intensive care Saturday. Bush was hospitalized in November for a cough, then moved to intensive care on Dec. 23 when he developed a fever. By Friday, though, his condition had improved, and on Saturday he was deemed well enough to leave the ICU.

Der Spiegel's obituary appeared only for a few minutes before it was taken down, and the paper apologized via Twitter for the error. But screenshots show that the respected weekly's take on the former president wasn't exactly glowing. Titled "The Better Bush," the obituary dubbed H.W. a "colorless politician" whose White House tenure looked good only in comparison to that of his bumbling son.