Echoing President Obama?s statement that a fiscal-cliff deal is near, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor on Monday afternoon to announce that he and Vice President Joe Biden have struck a deal to prevent tax hikes on the middle class.
?I can report that we?ve reached an agreement on all of the tax, the tax, issues. We are very, very close as the president just said,? McConnell said.
The Republican leader?s statements ratchet up pressure on Democrats, who are split over how to handle across-the-board spending cuts, called sequestration, which start Jan. 2. McConnell is arguing that lawmakers should vote on tax relief now and leave the spending cuts for later.
McConnell and Biden have agreed to raise income-tax rates on families making more than $450,000 and make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for everyone under that limit. And the estate tax would be exempted on the first $5 million with assets over that amount being taxed at 40 percent.
?A deal to prevent tax hikes on millions of Americans is finished,? a GOP aide said.
But Democrats disputed that, saying no deal is final until there is agreement on sequestration.
?There is no deal yet,? Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate?s No. 2 Democrat, told National Journal.
A Republican aide said that McConnell and Biden had a sequestration deal last night that would have allowed votes on two separate bills. But the White House backtracked when it became clear there was disagreement among Democrats on how to handle the votes.
On the floor, McConnell said his last conversation of the night with Biden was at 12:45 a.m. Monday. At 6:30 on Monday morning, the two kicked off another day filled with phone calls.
"This has been, clearly, a good-faith negotiation," McConnell said.
Here are the details of the tax agreement between McConnell and Biden, according to a Republican aide:
? Permanent extension of current policy on income-tax rates for those earning below $400,000 (single), $450,000?(couples).
? Permanent 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends for those below $400,000?(single), $450,000?(couples).
? A 20 percent rate on capital gains and dividends for those above $400,000?(single), $450,000?(couples).
? Permanent extension of the personal exemption phaseout and Pease provision for those below $250,000?(single), $300,000?(couples).
? Permanent estate-tax exemption?at $5 million, but a 40 percent rate.
? Permanent alternative minimum tax patch.
? Finance Committee tax extender package.
? Five-year extension of American Opportunity Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Earned Income Tax Credit.
? One-year extension of 50 percent bonus depreciation.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-tax-deal-struck-biden-162250280--politics.html
tyson chandler stephen hill draft tracker the pirates band of misfits cleveland browns minnesota twins bobby abreu
We’ve told you a bit about the latest writing and blogging platform from Ev Williams’ new product, Medium, and the team has been incrementally adding things, and talent, to the service to make it a full-featured interactive service. It’s been fun watching it evolve, albeit in private, read-only beta, and you can start to see a fuller picture of what it can be. In an email to Medium users last night, the team shared some new functionality that will allow writers and readers to dive a bit deeper into the content that they see in front of them. The really interesting thing is that Medium discusses its thoughts on “commenting”, which I think you’ll find refreshing: Stats: As of this afternoon, you can see what kind of attention your posts are getting and how people are reacting to them. The goal of Medium is to enable and support quality, rather than just popularity, so our philosophy around stats is that we need to provide meaningful metrics. Medium stats provide feedback that normal web analytics don’t give you. Reader Interaction: One thing you may have noticed about Medium is its lack of comments at the bottom of pages?which seems to have become an unfortunately ubiquitous feature of the web. We believe that normal web comments don’t add a lot of value on average (at least of the type we’re looking to create). However, we do think there is value to be had in reader feedback and interactivity. So, we’re working on a way of allowing reader participation (on an optional basis) that offers something new and different that comments don’t. We hope to have it on the site (at least to test out) by mid-January. As far as stats go, the Medium dashboard is pretty simple and what you’d expect. Until now, as a writer, you’d only be notified if your post was added to a “Collection,” a way of someone re-sharing your piece. This gives you more of an idea of how many people actually read your story: But wait, there’s a stat called “reads,” which is different than “views.” This means that the team is working on a way to figure out how many people actually made it through your story and didn’t just click and glance. That’s huge for writers, and, at the end of the day, readers. Knowing what you’ve really read, or even close to it,
The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards are happening in January 
