Sigh

AP:

President Barack Obama signed into law a huge, holiday-season tax bill extending cuts for all Americans on Friday, saluting a new spirit of political compromise as Republicans applauded and liberals seethed.

Because they're angry that they couldn't spike taxes on the rich, even if it meant the working poor and middle class suffer, too.

The benefits range from tax cuts for millionaires and the middle class

No they don't, nobody's getting a tax cut.

to longer-term help for the jobless...

The package retains Bush-era tax rates for all taxpayers, including the wealthiest Americans,

Pay no attention to the fact that we just said something completely different.

a provision Obama and congressional liberals opposed. It also offers 13 months of extended benefits to the unemployed and attempts to stimulate the economy with a Social Security payroll tax cut for all workers.

At a cost of $858 billion over two years,

If you pretend that all the money anyone earns belongs to the government and you only get what they "give" you.

the deal contains provisions dear to both Democrats and Republicans. It represents the most money that Obama was likely to have been able to dedicate over the next year to the slowly recovering economy. Yet it also increases the federal deficit

If you ignore the history that lower tax rates lead to increased revenues.

at a time when the country is growing increasingly anxious about the red ink...

He conceded that the White House and Congress face a difficult challenge when it comes to controlling the deficit and tackling the nation's debt...

But not that the behavior of him and the Democrats for the past 4 years had anything to do with it.

To complete the deal, Obama set aside his vow to extend tax cuts only for the middle class and lower wage earners. The measure also enacts an estate tax that is more generous to the wealthy

In this case "more generous" means "much more confiscatory than they are now"...and who else would be paying taxes meant to confiscate the wealth of the wealthy other than the wealthy?

than Obama had sought.

Since his campaign for president in 2008, Obama has said income tax rates should rise for single taxpayers with gross incomes over $200,000 and married couples with incomes over $250,000...

Really? That's a new interpretation of saying he wouldn't hike taxes on people making under $250,000...they're using the 'new math' $200,000 figure and only said who wouldn't have their taxes hiked (he's already broken that promise several times, of course), not that he was saying taxes "should rise" for everyone else.

The extended tax cuts in the negotiated package include rates lower than those that would have gone into effect Jan. 1,

I think Amnesty International and the Red Cross might want to investigate the AP, that's some seriously tortured language to say that taxes won't be jacked up...you mean not raising taxes means that tax rates would be lower than if they were raised?? Wow, Mr. Wizard!

a $1,000-per-child tax credit, tax breaks for college students and lower taxes on capital gains and dividends. The bill also extends through 2011, a series of business tax breaks designed to encourage investment that expired at the end of 2009.

Social Security taxes would be cut by nearly a third, from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, for this coming year. A worker making $50,000 would save $1,000; one making $100,000 would save $2,000.

But the payroll tax cut also means that workers will face an increase in 2012 if the full 6.2 percent rate is restored. And by scheduling President George W. Bush's

Not that the Constitution requires The House of Representatives to write all tax legislation or anything.

2001 and 2003 tax rates to expire in two years, the law ensures that taxes will be a top issue in the 2012 presidential election.

The tax code is filled with dozens of cuts that expire each year, and not all of them made it into the package. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., tried to include a property tax deduction for people who don't itemize, but it was left out. The provision would have saved taxpayers about $1.5 billion a year...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! When a Democrat introduces a provision it "would have saved taxpayers", but when Republicans introduce something it "costs" the government.

What's more, Obama's praise for Republicans, and his heralding of an overdue bipartisan moment in Washington, came after he himself spent the better part of 2010 bashing the GOP leadership as an obstructionist party of no.

But somehow we never got around to mentioning this before the elections.