Senate, Middle Class | featured news

The Senate narrowly approved legislation on Wednesday to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class but to let them lapse for more affluent households, in a surprise vote intended more to give both parties election-year cover than to produce a new tax law.

Tax cuts that President George W. Bush signed in 2001 and 2003 are playing a major role in the election of 2012. They surface again today as the Democratic-run Senate holds a symbolic debate over President Obama's proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts only for middle-class Americans, not for the wealthy.

Senators rejected dueling Democratic and Republican small-business tax cut plans on Thursday, the latest futile effort to break the election-year gridlock that’s consumed Capitol Hill on issues dealing with jobs and the economy... “There is no reason for [Republicans] to have killed this bill other than they are trying to hurt President Obama, small businesses and the middle class,” Reid, who introduced the bill, said at a news conference.

Republicans in the Senate on Saturday blocked Democratic legislation that would renew low tax rates for individuals' income up to $200,000 and families' income up to $250,000, letting them rise for the wealthiest.