President Barack Obama Friday savoured 'a big win' just six weeks after his rebuke by mid-term election voters, signing a 858-billion-dollar tax law after a contentious deal with Republicans. "The legislation... is a substantial victory for middle-class families across the country. They're the ones hit hardest by the recession we've endured. They're the ones who need relief right now," Obama said.
The president argued that the bill, which extends tax cuts passed by former president George W. Bush along with unemployment benefits, would help speed up so far sluggish economic growth after the worst recession in decades. And he said the bill could be a harbinger of a period of cross-party co-operation when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January, after routing his Democrats last month in mid-term elections.
"The final product proves, when we can put aside the partisanship and the political games, when we can put aside what's good for some of us in favour of what's good for all of us, we can get a lot done," he said. Unusually, Obama was joined at the bill signing by Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has spent the last two years doing everything he could to thwart Obama's agenda.
But McConnell signed on to the deal after Republicans won inclusion of an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy and a cut in inheritance taxes - provisions Obama does not like, but accepted to get the bill passed. "Republicans have fought hard for this legislation. Up until last week, most Democrats resisted, but in the end the American people were heard," McConnell said.
"That's a welcome change from the past two years." The pre-Christmas rush of legislation in the previously logjammed Senate helped confound perceptions that Obama would be constrained after his Democrats got an election pounding. "I think it is a big win for the president," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. But some Democrats are furious that the bill extended tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and rolled back inheritance tax on the richest estates.