Here is a funky roll call for the tax bill that the President just signed into law today; table courtesy of the Thomas web site.
| Ayes | Noes | PRES | NV | |
| Democratic | 139 | 112 | 3 | |
| Republican | 138 | 36 | 5 |
That is an odd 257-148 split, with the votes split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. 40% or so of the Democratic caucus was opposed and about a quarter of the Republicans were against, including some note fiscal conservatives and Tea Partiers like Bachmann and Pence; Ron Paul was actually in the Aye column here.
For now, we have a awkward coalition of reasonable folks on both sides of the aisle who approved of an extent ion of the status quo on tax policy. Neither side got all of what they wanted; conservatives couldn't quite get to kill off the "death tax" and had to swallow unemployment insurance extent ion and liberals had to eat extending tax cuts for the well-off.
This is the lame-duck House. Will this split carry into the next House? Quite a few Blue Doggy Democratic Yeas will be replaced by Republican Nays, TP folks who want to move things more to the right than a Obama-McConnell grand coalition can offer.
The interesting footnote to the White House signing was that Obama's Mitch was there while incoming speaker John Boehner was a no-show. That may be an ongoing theme for the next Congress, where McConnell winds up being the triangulation guy, between a more conservative house and a liberal Obama.
As much as the poli-sci wonk in me wouldn't mind seeing some blood-on-the-floor political fights that shut down government for weeks, that's not good or godly government. A modified status quo is better than scorched-earth politics, and that's what we have for the moment.
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