December 07, 2010 07:55 PM UTC

Reminder: Udall, Bennet Voted For Middle-Class Tax Cuts Only

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic reported yesterday, just so there’s no confusion:

Senate Republicans killed two bills Saturday that sought to extend the Bush tax cuts to the middle class while letting the cuts expire for the country’s wealthiest taxpayers. The first bill, passed by the House on Thursday, would have secured tax breaks for American families that make less than $250,000 a year. When that proposal failed to gain GOP support, Democrats raised the bar, proposing to extend the cuts to all Americans who make less than a million dollars a year. Republicans voted unanimously against both proposals. Colorado Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet voted for the middle class tax breaks.

Democrats lacked seven votes needed to break the GOP filibuster of the bills. Four Democrats voted with Republicans against the middle class cuts…

Although the turn of events comes as little surprise, some Democrats were aghast at the end of the voting. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill told the Times the debate has become absurd.

“I feel like I am in the twilight zone,” she said. “It’s depressing to me that we have gotten to this level of posturing, that they are saying if you do not give people a tax break on their second million, that nobody gets one.”

The question is now whether Mark Udall and Michael Bennet will support the president’s tax cut compromise, or become part of a larger push to reject it. They certainly can’t stop it on their own, but the results of caucus meetings today in both the House and the Senate should provide an indicator of whether there’s any broader appetite to put the brakes on a deal nobody really likes.

Both Bennet and Udall have indicated their support for extension of the Bush tax cuts for those earning less than $250,000 per year, though Bennet also put out a statement immediately after the election saying he was open to extending them at all levels. However, both Bennet and Udall have broken with the president over what they considered to be unacceptable deficit spending, Bennet recently coming out against a transportation proposal over its unrecouped cost.

Well? Did they get enough in return to justify the $900 billion cost of this deal? Is there a plan, for example, to restore the $120 billion the deal would deplete from Social Security? To be honest, we don’t really know–but the pressure on their left suddenly got very intense yesterday, and dissatisfaction with Barack Obama among his Democratic base over this compromise appears to have reached a level never before seen in his presidency.

A fateful moment?