Misterwade is first to report that House Likely to Vote on Senate Bill. CNN reports that the House Republican leadership has decided to let the vote on the Senate bill to resolve the "fiscal cliff" crisis come up for a straight up-or-down vote, perhaps as early as 9:00 p.m. tonight.
Here are some more details if you are interested. MarketWatch reports:
House to vote on Senate fiscal cliff deal
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. House of Representatives plans to offer a straight up-or-down vote Tuesday night on the Senate-approved compromise to undo the fiscal cliff of austerity measures which began taking effect in the new year, reports said. Prospects for passage remained uncertain, but such a vote would mark a step back from a plan Republicans voiced earlier to amend the Senate bill, a move which might have sunk the deal. The House vote was likely to occur sometime after 9 p.m. Eastern time, CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported separately.
House could vote Tuesday on Senate cliff deal
House Republicans reversed course Tuesday evening and charted a course toward likely passage of the bipartisan agreement struck in the Senate to avoid the worst effects of the “fiscal cliff,’’setting up a late-night vote to complete a dramatic day in which the critical legislation appeared to be endangered for several hours.
In a second meeting with GOP members Tuesday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) outlined the options for handling the Senate plan while explaining the high “risk” involved with approving a different bill that might die in the other chamber, according to lawmakers exiting the evening session. Such an outcome could make the House GOP the public face of a failed effort to avert automatic tax hikes and spending cuts and possibly cause a public outcry as taxes on every American worker would jump. ...
As lawmakers left the meeting, a broad consensus seemed to be emerging that Boehner’s team should just bring up the Senate bill, negotiated by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for a vote, rather than try to amend a large package of roughly $330 billion in spending cuts to accompany the bill back across the Capitol for an uncertain fate.
Grover Norquist has given his full endorsement as it accomplishes a substantial advance of his goals to keep government spending limited to 18% of GDP, and lays the foundation for substantial cuts ahead in the debt-ceiling limit in the next two months. This is a remarkable deal for the G.O.P. and they would be off their rockers not to grab it and move on to the debt-ceiling negotiation without the Democrats having this bargaining lever over them any longer.
My feeling is that we could have, and should have, only included a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts here, as we now are locking in 88% of the Bush level tax cuts that will limit tax revenue to 18% of GDP while spending is now at 23% of GDP. This is a long, long way down. I'm am looking forward to hearing some credible Democrat explain how we expect to sustain anything remotely close to current Democratic social spending level with tax revenues at only 18% of GDP. But, I'm not a member of Congress so my vote doesn't count. (Did I mention this before?)
5:45 PM PT:
CBS News issues the most definitive report so far in House to vote on "fiscal cliff" tonight Updated at 8:05 p.m. ET
The House will hold a straight vote on the "fiscal cliff" bill passed by the Senate overnight - a major step in finally averting several effects of the "cliff."
If the bill passes the House, it moves on to President Obama for his signature, ending weeks of fighting about how to deal with the tax hikes and spending cuts that began hitting the country today.
It wasn't easy getting to this point today in the House. After meeting with the Republican conference and listening to members' concerns, House Speaker John Boehner presented them with two options, a GOP leadership aide said: The first option would be to offer an amendment to the Senate bill that would add a $323 billion package of spending cuts. If GOP leaders couldn't muster enough support for the amendment idea, the second option would be to vote on the Senate bill as-is.-tonight/
6:02 PM PT: Wolf Blitzer has just broken into the Piers Morgan's timeslot to report live on the upcoming House floor vote which he says he expected to occur this hour. The debate has started.
CNN is now announcing that the actual vote will not occur until 11;15 ET because so many House Reps want to give speeches about it.
7:44 PM PT: The vote on the House floor has started and is scheduled for 15 minutes.
12.29 minute left. So far 90 for with 50 against. If these ratios hold up it looks like it will pass with mostly Democratic votes.