Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET: An agreement to stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff won approval in the House late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the law on Wednesday night, the battle over which foreshadowed more fights with Congress over spending.

Following a day of hectic wrangling on Capitol Hill — where the prospects for passing the bipartisan, Senate legislation regarding the fiscal cliff hung in the balance for much of New Year's Day — the House voted 257 to 167 to pass the belated compromise measure over the objections of many conservative Republicans.

The legislation takes steps toward resolving the combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that took effect at midnight on Jan. 1. It preserves tax rates as they were at the end of 2012, except for those individuals earning more than $400,000 and households earning over $450,000. It also allows taxes on capital gains and dividends to go up, and extends benefits of the unemployed. Additionally, the Senate bill delays the onset of the "sequester" — the swift, automatic spending cuts — for two months. 

Fiscal cliff compromise leaves few satisfied

"Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress I will sign a law that raises the taxes on the wealthiest of Americans," Obama said in remarks at the White House Tuesday, "while preventing a middle-class tax hike."

The House vote laid bare some of the internal ideological divisions to plague the GOP over the past two years. More Republican congressmen (151) voted against the Senate bill than for it (85), meaning that Democrats' support was needed to advance the final deal. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took the rare step of casting a vote, and did so in favor of the legislation. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the former Republican vice presidential nominee, also supported the package. But Boehner's top two lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., each opposed the deal.

"Now the focus turns to spending," Boehner said in a statement following the House vote. "The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the ‘balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

While the last-minute action on Capitol Hill essentially mitigates much of the risk posed to the U.S. economic recovery by the fiscal cliff, it hardly brings resolution to the bitter and often intractable fight in Washington over taxes and spending. The first half of 2013 will feature battles in Congress over raising the debt limit, continuing basic government funding and the expiration of this two-month delay in the sequester. 

Bipartisan outrage after House skips vote on $60 billion Sandy aid bill

Obama nodded to those looming fights in his remarks Tuesday evening, renewing his call for "balance" in any solution in the coming year to address deficits and debts. But the president also sternly warned Congress against using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, as Republicans had in summer of 2011.

"While I'll negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether to pay the bills they have racked up," Obama said.

PhotoBlog: Deal done, Obama heads back to Hawaii with a weary wink

The fiscal cliff itself was the product of discord in Congress resolving those very issues. And the difficulty in attaining even this less ambitious piece of legislation — versus the kind of "grand bargain" Obama had first sought in talks with Republicans — offered a cautionary tale for the 113th Congress, in which the House and the Senate remain controlled by the same parties as during the past two years. 

Squabbling
And even for much of Tuesday, House approval of the fiscal legislation — which was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Vice President Joe Biden — was far from certain. GOP leaders were forced to cajole conservatives who complained the fallback deal contained insufficient spending cuts. Only after it became clear that Republicans wouldn't have the votes to amend the Senate proposal — which the upper chamber said it wouldn't even consider — did House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, bring the bill to the floor. 

The squabbling was familiar to any observers of Congress during the past two years. This divide almost resulted in a government shutdown and a default on the national debt in 2011. It again threatened Tuesday to allow the painful, across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts to play out just as the U.S. economic recovery showed signs of accelerating.

PhotoBlog: See images of Congress working overtime to avoid fiscal cliff

And this deal just approved by Congress in the waning hours of 2013's first day all but ensures that much of the coming year will be dominated by similar battles in Washington. Republicans are hopeful they might be able to extract more spending cuts and entitlement reforms with the government up against other deadlines, like the one needed this spring to authorize more government borrowing. 

That could complicate Obama's already-ambitious second term agenda. The president said just this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will seek comprehensive immigration reform legislation and new laws to address gun violence.

After weeks of uncertainty, bluffing and posturing in Washington D.C., the Senate voted in the early hours of Tuesday morning to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts. However, the fiscal bargaining is far from over and more budget drama is likely on the way.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

The Capitol dome illuminates at dusk on Capitol Hill on Dec. 31, 2012 in Washington, DC.

The deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky would raise income taxes on single earners with annual incomes above $400,000 and married couples with incomes above $450,000.

The measure will now be turned over to the House, which needs to give its backing and will hold a session on Tuesday starting at noon.

House Speaker John Boehner -- the top Republican in Congress -- said the House would consider the Senate deal. But he left open the possibility of the House amending the Senate bill, which would spark another round of legislating.

"The House will honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement if it is passed. Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members ... have been able to review the legislation," Boehner and other House Republican leaders said in a statement.

Next big fight
Although the Senate agreed at the last minute to avert broader tax increases, the very idea of a “deadline” has lost some of its meaning since each budget deal seems to be merely a prelude to another fixed date when some critically important action must be taken – next up: Congress will have to decide what to do about the "sequester" spending cuts which will come up again in February, as well as decide in March on whether to increase the federal borrowing limit.

Congress is also set to embark on fundamental tax reform legislation in the New Year – as Obama himself seemed to acknowledge Monday when he said he’s intent on “doing some more work to reform our tax code so that wealthy individuals, the biggest corporations can’t take advantage of loopholes and deductions… that aren’t available to most Americans. So there’s still more work to be done in the tax code to make it fair….”

The indecision over taxes, spending, and borrowing has become chronic, in part a reflection of the fact that neither party controls both the executive and legislative branches. Ever since the Republicans won the House in 2010, the intermittent rounds of bargaining between GOP congressional leaders and Obama have run aground over the fundamentals: the future cost of the entitlement programs -- especially Medicare -- and who should bear the burden of paying for their growth.

The two sides’ clashing definitions of “fairness” make it hard for them to decide who should be paying a bigger tax bill.

And while tax revenues have been increasing – they’re up 10 percent in the first two months of fiscal year 2013 even under the current tax law -- the increase, even if it is sustained, won’t be enough to pay for future benefits that have been promised.

On the spending side, the growth in entitlement spending is largely driven by the demographics of an aging population. The ratio of tax-paying workers to retired beneficiaries was 3.3 workers for every beneficiary during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but it has been steadily sinking and will drop to 2-to-1 by 2030.

The gap between what members of Congress profess to want to do (reduce future budget deficits and borrowing) and what they are actually willing to do is growing ever wider and more glaring, since spending curbs would fall on people who feel they have earned certain Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Failure to reach agreement on these basics is what led to the fiscal cliff that Congress and Obama face.

Domestic spending in the cross-hairs
As part of an accord with GOP leaders last year to raise the government’s borrowing limit, Obama signed the Budget Control Act. The law requires about $100 billion in spending reductions in 2013, out of a total of roughly $3.5 trillion in spending.

While an approximately 3 percent cut in spending might not seem drastic, the Budget Control Act exempts most entitlement spending from the cuts, so the reductions would be concentrated on military outlays and domestic discretionary spending programs ranging from air traffic control to immigration enforcement.

Senate approves deal to avert fiscal cliff; vote goes to House

The law would make reductions – unless Congress delays or rescinds them – of about 10 percent in discretionary appropriations for defense programs and about 8 percent in non-defense programs in 2013.

If members of Congress seriously want deficit reduction, the Budget Control Act is certainly one way to get it: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that spending would actually go down. Federal spending would be a smaller share of national income in 2022 under the Budget Control Act (22.3 percent of gross domestic product) than they were in FY2012 (22.9 percent). And the budget deficit would fall from 7 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2012 to less than 1 percent of GDP by 2017.

Despite the impressive deficit reduction that would be achieved by going over the fiscal cliff, the members of Congress who have sought to avoid the fiscal cliff think the economy is too weak to tolerate the tighter fiscal policy that many of them voted for in 2011. Undoing the tax increases and spending cuts would boost economic growth by about 2¼ percent by the end of 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

With many of the details of the agreement or a more far-reaching accord still up in the air, there are some benchmarks to judge the deal that may emerge:

• Does it last only one year or more than one year?
• Would it significantly reduce future budget deficits?
• Would it reduce federal debt, measured as a percentage of the nation’s income?
• Are its spending provisions enforceable and credible – or are they hazy promises that may not be carried out by future Congresses, by Obama, and by the next president?
• If the primary goal is deficit and debt reduction, is the agreement better or worse than the Budget Control Act?
• Is it likely to spur economic growth and will it do anything to address the chronic problem of the 23 million unemployed?

Reuters contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama signaled during his first debate with his Republican opponent Mitt Romney on Oct. 3  that he was willing to consider a change in Social Security benefits.

He said, “It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill” in their 1983 deal that raised Social Security taxes and pushed up the eligibility age for collecting full retirement benefits from 65 to 67.

Now Obama has put forward his “tweak”: changing the formula used to increase Social Security benefits every year – a switch that would result in retirees getting a smaller increase in benefits than they would get under the current cost of living formula.

The average Social Security benefit for a retired worker is about $1,230 a month.

Beneficiaries will get a 1.7 percent increase in benefits, or a cost of living adjustment (COLA), in January to compensate them for the effects of rising prices. Beneficiaries got a 3.6 percent increase in 2012 but got no increase in 2011.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Protesters rally in Florida against cutting Medicare/Social Security benefits.

The Social Security benefit increases are pegged to the consumer price index for urban wage earners, a measure called CPI-W, which is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If prices drop, Social Security benefits do not get reduced.

Obama proposes to change to a different measure called “chained CPI” which attempts to reflect how consumers adjust their mix of purchases as the prices of different items change: for example, if the price of spaghetti was surging while the price of men’s shirts was unchanged, you might decide to buy somewhat less spaghetti and more shirts. You won’t stop buying spaghetti entirely and spend every last dollar on shirts, but you will adjust your consumer mix.

Jason Fichtner, the former chief economist of the Social Security Administration who now teaches at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, said the COLA which took effect in 2009 was a 5.8 percent increase using the current formula. If the chained CPI measure had been used, the increase would have been 5.2 percent.

On average, the difference between the current COLA and a COLA using chained CPI would be about three-tenths of a percentage point per year: so if under the current formula, beneficiaries would get a 1.5 percent increase in a given year, they’d get a 1.2 percent increase under a chained CPI formula.

“In times of high inflation, beneficiaries will still get a large increase; it just won’t be as much,” Fichtner said. “Everyone is still going to get a benefit increase -- both a nominal increase and a real increase to keep up their purchasing power.”

He added, “Depending on the measure of inflation you use, you can make the argument that we have been giving people a higher adjustment than is warranted, based on inflation and the change of consumer behavior to adjust to price. What this (chained CPI) does is just bring it back to a more realistic or accurate measure.”

Because there are so many Americans who collect Social Security benefits (56 million), because the number of recipients keeps growing by about 3 percent a year, and because Social Security is the single biggest spending item in the federal budget (more than one-fifth of all federal outlays), even a modest change – or “tweak” as Obama would say – would result in a significant reduction in spending.

Last year the Congressional Budget Office estimated that switching to the chained CPI formula for Social Security recipients would cut spending by $112 billion over 10 years (2012-2021).

If this switch in the COLA formula were applied to retired federal workers and to military retirees and their dependents it would save an additional $24 billion over ten years.

Obama’s proposed change would not be a cut in actual dollar terms in Social Security benefits – it would not mean a recipient who had been getting $1,230 a month would now get $1,150 a month. But some Social Security proponents still contend it will cause some hardship for some people. A calculation last year by the National Academy of Social Insurance found that a COLA that is 0.3 percentage points lower each year would result in a monthly benefit that was about 8.4 percent lower (than it would be under the current formula) by the time a retiree reached age 92.

In an analysis last year the CBO said, “An argument against reducing the COLA is that the prices faced by Social Security beneficiaries could rise faster than prices faced by the population at large. For example, beneficiaries are likely to spend more than younger people do for medical care, the price of which generally outpaces the prices of many other goods and services.”

In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Tuesday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “the details of this are not all ironed out, but they all mitigate for helping the poorest and neediest in our society, whether they are SSI (Supplemental Security Income) recipients, whether they’re 80 and older or whether the truly needy in between.”

She said some statements by Democratic House members opposing Obama’s chained CPI proposal were not indicating total opposition, but opposition only if the final accord to be signed by the president did not provide exemptions for certain categories of the kind Pelosi mentioned.

But Eric Kingson, co-chairman of a group called Social Security Works and a professor at Syracuse University who served as an advisor to the 1982-83 Greenspan commission on Social Security Reform, said. “It’s a terrible idea. You can dress it up any way you want. It’s a benefit cut and it violates the promise that Leader Pelosi made, the president made, and almost every politician – Democrats and Republicans -- made that they would not cut Social Security benefits.”

He said the purpose of the COLA is to ensure that benefits maintain their purchasing power throughout your lifetime. He said for a beneficiary who retires at age 65 and reaches age 95, he or she will have lost $18,000 in benefits compared to what he’d get under the current system.

Kingson said he worked as a “very active volunteer” for Obama’s re-election and respects him, but “this is going to get an awful lot of people very upset…. It fosters a lot cynicism if we now move to cutting Social Security.” He said the Obama White House “probably doesn’t understand how critical this system is to regular Americans.”

History explains why Republicans are wary about agreeing to a bargain with President Barack Obama that would promise to curb the growth of federal spending.

Republicans say that when they agree to tax increases in exchange for Democratic spending curbs, the tax increases occur, but the spending growth doesn’t get restrained.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling R-Texas, a member of the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission in 2010, gave a clear statement of the Republican argument.

“If I believed that the increased revenue (resulting from increasing taxes) would actually be used for deficit reduction, you know, I might reluctantly come to the table in a global agreement,” Hensarling said in December of 2010. “But when I look at TEFRA (the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act) in '82, when I look at Andrews Air Force Base in '90 (the fiscal negotiations between President George W. Bush and Democratic congressional leaders), it just seems to me that somehow the spending restraint never quite materializes and yet the increased revenues do, and it seems like the increased revenues simply chase more spending.”

Does the history bear the Republicans out on this? Let’s examine each of those episodes.

Anonymous / AP

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 22, 1984 picture, U.S. President Ronald Reagan addresses a session with House Republicans in Washington on Capitol Hill, appealing for support of a three-year $150 billion deficit reduction plan. Next to the podium are Vice President George Bush and Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., right.

1982 tax increase

In 1981, Reagan signed a tax cut bill into law. Known as Kemp-Roth after its two chief sponsors -- Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y. and Sen. William Roth, R-Del. -- the law sliced the maximum income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent and the maximum capital gains tax rate from nearly 40 percent to 20 percent.

Reagan’s tax cut also indexed the tax brackets, the personal exemption and the standard deduction to the inflation rate, protecting taxpayers from being pushed into higher brackets due to increases in their nominal income.

Just a year later, Reagan agreed to a tax increase, partly due to fears of growing federal deficits. The deficit in Fiscal Year 1982 had been 4 percent of gross domestic product and in FY 1983 would be 6 percent of GDP.

The 1982 law increased excise taxes on cigarettes, telephone calls and airplane tickets, changed asset depreciation rules for businesses, and curbed certain tax breaks. One consolation for Reagan and his party was that the bill preserved the 1981 income tax rate cuts, despite Democrats’ attempts to undo or delay them.

In a televised address rallying support for the bill, Reagan told the nation that the deficit reduction package included $280 billion in spending cuts, which meant, he said, “$3 less in spending outlays for each $1 of increased revenue.

But in the final three-year package that Reagan signed into law, the mixture was $98 billion in increased tax revenue and $17.5 billion in spending reductions.

It’s not clear why Reagan used the $280 billion figure, but contemporaneous accounts by the authoritative Congressional Quarterly put the agreed-to spending cuts at $17.5 billion.

Yet the “$3 in spending cuts to $1 in revenue increases” theme has become a fixture in Republican lore.

More important is what actually happened to spending and revenues in the three years that followed the accord: spending increased by 17 percent but declined as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 23.5 percent of GDP to 22.8 percent.

That happened because the economy during those years was growing its way out of what had been the most serious recession since World War II. Tax revenue increased over the same period by 22 percent, going from 17.5 percent of GDP to 17.7 percent of GDP.

In the vote on the 1982 deficit reduction package, 88 House Republicans and 12 conservative Democrats who’d voted for Reagan’s 1981 tax cut defected from Reagan. They included Kemp, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

“'Conservatives feel less and less they have a home,” lamented conservative activist Richard Viguerie after the vote. ''We feel impotent and beaten up on.”

So why Reagan did agree to the tax increases in 1982?

In his Aug. 20 address, Reagan said the tax increases would “when combined with our cuts in government spending, reduce interest rates and put more Americans back to work again.”

When Reagan spoke, interest rates were extraordinarily high: the yield on a 10-year Treasury security was over 13 percent, compared to the 20-year average at that point of about 7 percent. Today the yield on the 10-year Treasury is 1.7 percent.

Interest rates, Reagan said “should be lower now than they are, with the success we've had in reducing inflation. But part of the problem is psychological: a pessimism in the money markets that we won't stay the course and continue lowering the cost of government. The projected increase in budget deficits has added to that pessimism and fear.”

Economist Allen Sinai told the New York Times that Reagan “changed his (anti-tax) tune when he began to believe that big budget deficits, with a continued tight monetary policy, would mean high interest rates forever.” Interest rates did fall after 1982, not dramatically or quickly, but steadily for the rest of Reagan’s presidency.

1990 budget accord

When Republicans nominated George H.W. Bush to be their presidential candidate in 1988, he gave the party’s convention what was to become a famous pledge: “the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: Read my lips, no new taxes!”

Two years later Democrats got Bush to break that promise and sign a five-year $146 billion tax increase into law. This had the desired effects, from the Democrats’ point of view, of splitting the Republican Party, undermining support for Bush and ultimately contributing to his defeat in the 1992 election.

In their accord, Bush and congressional leaders agreed to:

•       Increase the top income tax rate from 28 percent to 31 percent and limit the value of itemized deductions for higher-income people.

•       Raise Medicare payroll taxes

•       Impose and increase taxes on cars, boats, airplanes, gasoline, cigarettes, beer and other products.

What did Bush get in return? Democrats agreed to reduce entitlement spending by about $100 billion and discretionary spending by about $182 billion.

In the five years that followed the deal, federal spending increased by 18 percent, but declined as a percentage of GDP, from 21.2 percent to 20.2 percent, because, as in the mid-1980s, the economy was growing.

Bush’s agreement with Democrats did not fundamentally change the entitlement programs that were to drive future spending. And the 1990 tax increase was a prelude to another tax increase in 1993 after Bill Clinton defeated Bush in the 1992 election.

The United States Congress could reprise its role as the Grinch who stole Christmas, as lawmakers continue to bicker toward an end-of-year fiscal cliff deadline that threatens to drag legislative drama through the holidays.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told fellow Republicans on Wednesday to not make any serious plans around or after Christmas, implying that work on resolving the fiscal cliff would extend well through the holiday.

"We can do things very quickly, but this is not something we can do very easily, at least as far as bill-drafting goes," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters on Tuesday. "I think it’s going to be extremely difficult to get it done before Christmas, but it could be done."

Yet these politicians are engaging in just the latest version of a yuletide game of beat-the-clock in Washington. 

Christmas trees, menorahs and other festive adornments have been placed at the White House and Capitol, but a glum sentiment has overtaken Washington. And it’s all thanks to the emerging annual tradition of late-December partisan standoffs as the president and Congress race to complete unfinished business.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Capitol Hill police check an unidentified man dressed as Santa Claus with a metal detector as he enters the U.S. Capitol on his way to Speaker of the House John Boehner's office on December 12, 2012 in Washington, DC.

And while that’s meant long hours for lawmakers, Hill staffers and reporters, it’s also resulted in a tremendous amount of uncertainty for many Americans. The last few holiday seasons found some shoppers hitting the stores with scarcely any idea of how much their paychecks would be taxed in the new year. And in 2009, the fate of President Barack Obama’s closely-watched health care overhaul rested on the outcome of an early-morning vote on Christmas Eve.

This year is no different. Congress has known since the summer of 2011 that the fiscal cliff – the automatic expiration of the 2001 Bush tax cuts, and the automatic spending cuts set forth by the 2011 debt ceiling deal – would spring into place at the end of December unless acted upon.

Indeed, the automatic spending cuts, which fall heavily upon the defense budget, were designed to be so distasteful as to give Republicans and Democrats time and an incentive to act well before the end-of-year deadline to reach a deal.

Even if Republicans and Obama were able to reach an agreement today, it would take at least a few days to translate that agreement into legislative language. And once that’s drafted, House rules require that the legislation be posted online (for review) 72 hours before a vote. In short, time is running out to reach a deal before the end of the year, let alone Christmas.

The historical idea of a “lame-duck” Congress – a snooze-worthy session in which defeated or retiring lawmakers do little of substance – seems almost antiquated, given the frenzied and substantial work left for legislators during recent holiday seasons.

It almost seems as though lawmakers accomplish more during December than they do during the rest of the year.

Last year, it was the threat of a hike in the payroll tax rate that extended late into the holiday season. Obama and Republicans wrangled over whether a yearlong, 2 percent payroll tax cut – which they authorized in the waning days of 2010 – should be extended for another year.

At the time, Republicans argued that the cost of the payroll tax cuts should be offset with other spending cuts, a position which Obama said was unusual, given the other tax cuts Republicans had previously proposed without a similar offset. The GOP ultimately relented, passing an extension of the payroll tax (only for two months) on Dec. 22.

Of course, that standoff was the byproduct of the previous December’s showdown, which also played a role in setting up the current fiscal cliff currently beguiling lawmakers.

That December featured a negotiation between Obama and Republicans – who had just delivered a “shellacking” to Democrats, in the president’s words, and retaken control of the House – over the fate of the 2001 Bush tax cuts.

Republicans reached a deal with Obama at a relatively early point, on Dec. 6, on a package that preserved existing tax rates for an additional two years past the end of the 2010, when the tax cuts first sought by President George W. Bush were scheduled to expire. In exchange, Obama won an extension in unemployment benefits, which were also set to expire. The president signed the bill on Dec. 17.

It would be easy to look at the record and assign blame for the discord during these past three Decembers to the differences between the Republican-held House and a Democratic White House. But it was the preceding December (in 2009), when Democrats enjoyed strong majorities in both chambers, that saw one of the most high-wire votes in Congress.

The Senate convened on Christmas Eve morning that year to hold a historic, party-line vote on approving the upper chamber’s version of Obama’s health care reform law. Members of the Senate gathered at 7:05 a.m. – giving them enough time to travel home to rejoin their families for Christmas – to vote 60 to 39 to give final approval to the bill that would ultimately serve as the basis for “Obamacare.”

The vote ended months of partisan strife and wrangling over the fate of health care reform, and was designed to advance the legislation to the House before Massachusetts could elect a senator to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, whose seat was held by a placeholder, Democratic Sen. Paul Kirk.

The real drama took place, though, in the weeks preceding that vote. Democrats worked around-the-clock to secure the 60 votes they needed to pass the health care law, and Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson didn’t agree to become the 60th decisive vote until Saturday, Dec. 20.

His support prompted a series of procedural votes to move the health care legislation toward a final vote at 1:05 a.m. on  Dec. 21. But even that vote was almost imperiled by a major blizzard that blanketed Washington and crippled transportation throughout the city, forcing senators to camp out at the Capitol.

Those dark-of-night votes could become another staple of this year’s scramble to reach a deal to resolve the fiscal cliff, the countdown to which will mimic the revelers in Times Square on New Year’s Eve unless Congress and Obama can soon reach an accord.

An overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress and the Obama White House to reach a deal featuring both tax increases and spending cuts to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, according to the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Click here for full results from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf)

In fact, majorities of Democrats, Republicans and political independents each support such a deal.

Yet respondents are split over whether any kind of agreement can be reached, and nearly seven in 10 believe that the coming year will feature Democrats and Republicans in Congress showing little willingness to come to an agreement on important matters.

Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, says the public is sending this one-word message to Washington: compromise.

“Doing something trumps doing nothing,” Hart said.

Related: Boehner: 'Serious differences' separate GOP from Obama

The survey – conducted a month after November’s election – also shows a positive uptick in opinion toward President Barack Obama, and more negative views about defeated GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. The poll also finds that a majority of Americans now support gay marriage.

‘Hints of a thaw’

According to the poll, a combined 68 percent of Americans say that the fiscal cliff – the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts set to take place at the beginning of next year if nothing is done – is either a “very serious” or “fairly serious” problem.

A similar two-thirds of respondents are willing to accept an increase in taxes or cuts in federal government programs they care about to reach an agreement to avoid the problem.

Asked another way, 65 percent say leaders in Congress should find a compromise to reduce the budget deficit, even if that means Democrats would need to accept targeted spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and that Republicans would need to accept targeted increases in tax rates.

By comparison, just 28 percent believe that leaders should stick to their traditional positions on the deficit – even if that means Congress goes over the fiscal cliff, triggering those automatic spending cuts and tax increases.

“There are hints of a thaw here, compared to previous data we’ve seen,” McInturff says.

Indeed, for the first time in the poll, a majority of Republicans (59 percent) want GOP leaders in the House and Senate to make compromises in order to gain consensus in the current budget debate.

Previously, in 2011, majorities of Republicans said they preferred GOP leaders to stick to their positions rather than make compromises.

And the percentage of Democrats who favor compromise on this question (70 percent) is now at an all-time high in the survey.

Who’s to blame if there isn’t a deal? Everyone

Yet the public is split – 48 percent of respondents are optimistic, and 48 percent are pessimistic – over whether Congress will be able to reach consensus to avoid the fiscal cliff. And another 69 percent believe that the next year on Capitol Hill will be marked by division and little willingness to compromise.

If there is no compromise on the fiscal cliff and the automatic tax increases and spending cuts go into effect at the beginning of next year, 24 percent say they will blame congressional Republicans more, while 19 percent will point the finger at Obama and congressional Democrats.

But a majority of respondents (56 percent) say they’ll blame both sides equally.

Still, twice as many Americans say they trust the president more in handling this fiscal situation (38 percent) than House Speaker John Boehner and the congressional Republicans (19 percent).

And significant majorities believe Obama holds a clear mandate from the election on issues related to this subject:

• 68 percent say he has a mandate on cutting taxes for families earning less than $250,000 per year
• 65 percent say he has a mandate on reducing the deficit by both increasing taxes on the wealthy and reducing federal spending
• And 59 percent say he has a mandate on eliminating the Bush-era tax cuts for household income over $250,000 a year.

Obama’s lift vs. the GOP’s decline

Speaking of Obama, the poll shows an uptick in his numbers after his victory in last month’s presidential election.

Fifty-three percent of adults approve of his overall job performance, and 49 percent approve of his handling of the economy – higher marks on these questions than at any time during the 2012 campaign.

Another 53 percent say they feel either “optimistic and confident” or “satisfied and hopeful” Obama will do a good job as president, which is up three points from Oct. 2012.

“Any president has a little bit of a lift heading into the first few months of any new term in office,” McInturff, the GOP pollster, says.

But if Obama is getting a lift after the election, the Republican Party is seeing a further decline.

The GOP’s favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll now stands at 30 percent/45 percent (minus-15 points), which is down from 36 percent/43 percent (minus-7) right before the election.

That’s compared with the Democratic Party’s 44 percent/35 percent rating (plus-9 points).

What’s more, asked to give a word or short phrase to describe the Republican Party, 65 percent offered a negative comment, including more than half of Republicans.

Some of the responses: “Bad,” “weak,” “negative,” “uncompromising,” “need to work together,” “broken,” “disorganized” and “lost.”

By contrast, 37 percent gave negative descriptions of the Democratic Party, while 35 percent were positive.

“Republicans have gone off the image cliff,” says Hart, the Democratic pollster.

“Elections have consequences,” McInturff adds about the GOP. “And among those consequences is the cost of losing.”

The consequences of losing also exist for Romney, whom Obama defeated in November.

Romney’s favorable/unfavorable rating in the poll is 35 percent/44 percent (minus-9 points), down from his 43 percent/44 percent score (minus-1) before the election. Much of that drop comes from Republicans and conservatives. 

Majority supports same-sex marriage

Finally, for the first time ever in the NBC/WSJ poll, a majority of respondents – 51 percent – support same-sex marriage.

That percentage in support is up from 30 percent in 2004, 41 percent in 2009 and 49 percent in March 2012, demonstrating how quickly public opinion on this issue has changed in just eight years.

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Dec. 6-9 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents), and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

President Barack Obama won re-election in large part by calling for shifting more of the tax burden to higher-income people. The tax on inherited wealth – the estate tax – inevitably will play a role in getting to that goal since only wealthier people have taxable estates.

Yet the estate tax hasn’t figured prominently in Obama’s public pitches on tax equity. For example, Obama didn't mention the estate tax on Monday in his campaign-style speech in Redford, Mich., or in his weekly radio address in which he said, “We’re going to have to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay higher tax rates.”

And he made only one fleeting reference to the estate tax during his three debates with Republican opponent Mitt Romney, who proposed eliminating the estate tax. That has long been a Republican goal and one which they achieved for just one year, 2010 – as part of the 2001-03 tax reform bills.

“The estate tax has been sort of a poor stepchild to the Bush tax cuts. It doesn’t get a lot of attention,” said Mike Lapham, project director of Responsible Wealth, a group organizing a push for a higher estate tax than Obama or congressional Republicans want.

At a time when Congress is searching for new revenue, there is revenue at stake here and it isn’t trivial.

If Congress doesn’t change the law, next year the top estate tax rate increases from 35 percent to 55 percent and it will be imposed on estates of more than $1 million, rather than on estates over $5.08 million as it now is.

If the currently scheduled estate tax increase takes effect, the revenue from it would be $37.6 billion in 2013 and $62 billion by 2019, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Obama has put an estate tax offer on the table. In his fiscal year 2013 budget plan, he proposed a less burdensome alternative to the steep tax increase which takes effect Jan. 1. The president wants the tax to revert to what it was in 2009: a 45 percent tax rate, with the first $3.5 million of the estate exempted. His plan would raise about $20 billion in 2013 and $31.5 billion by 2019 – roughly half of the revenue raised by allowing the currently scheduled estate tax increase to occur.

Obama is getting some prodding from some of his own supporters to go further. On Tuesday a group of wealthy progressives organized by Lapham’s Responsible Wealth group – including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard mutual fund empire and Dr. Richard Rockefeller, great-grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller – urged Congress to enact a bigger estate tax than Obama wants.

Bill Pugliano / Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks about the economy at the Daimler Detroit Diesel engine plant December 10, 2012 in Redford, Michigan.

They propose a $4 million exemption per married couple and a graduated tax rate starting at 45 percent – but with a top tax rate “to be determined,” Lapham said.

Since his group’s desired top rate is still undecided, he can’t estimate exactly how much revenue would be raised but Lapham said he didn’t think Congress would accept a top rate higher than 55 percent. “The reality is 55 percent makes some people squeamish,” he said.

Rubin led under the Treasury Department under President Clinton at a time of relative prosperity and declining federal budget deficits and even a surplus in 1999. He made the case that “a substantial estate tax would provide revenues at a time when our federal government badly needs these revenues to fund a sound fiscal regime, to fund public investment and to provide economic security.”

The federal government would spend the new revenues which flow in to the Treasury from a higher estate tax and that federal spending in turn would stimulate economic growth, Rubin said, rather than the money sitting in a savings account or other investment vehicle. “Wealthy people tend to spend a relatively small percent of their total income,” he said.

Rockefeller argued that a higher estate tax would “prevent the rise of a hereditary aristocracy.”

And Rubin argued likewise that the estate tax had to be higher than the one proposed by Obama because it “works to reduce concentrations of economic and political power across generations and those concentrations are antithetical to the basic premise, if you will, of the founding of our Republic which was it was a land of opportunity.”

The outcome here hinges not on men like Rubin, who is no longer in a position to bargain with congressional leaders, but with power brokers such as Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who has announced that 2013 will be the year of a fundamental redesign of the entire tax code, something that hasn’t happened in more than 25 years.

While individuals, corporations, and lobbyists wait for that mega-event, in the short term, it isn’t yet clear if an estate tax “patch” – keeping the 2012 rate and exemption in place for next year – will be part of a year-ending bargain between Obama and congressional leaders.

“Sen. Baucus is working to protect Montana's family farmers and ranchers who pass their properties on to their children and future generations,” said Senate Finance Committee spokesman Sean Neary on Tuesday. “He supports the most estate tax relief he can get for these Montana families, which -- right now -- would be 2012 law.”

Updated 5:35pm ET Even as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner struggle to find a way to avoid income tax increases in the New Year on almost all households, a separate set of tax increases which Obama signed into law as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) will begin to affect workers, investors and employers on Jan. 1.

Even if Boehner and Obama reach a deal on the “fiscal cliff,” $24.6 billion in 2013 Obamacare tax increases must take effect on Jan. 1 in order for the carefully designed health care overhaul to function in budget terms as its supporters promised it would: not adding anything to future budget deficits, but, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reducing cumulative deficits by $132 billion between 2010 and 2019.

The Obamacare tax increases which begin on New Year’s Day are:

• A 2.3 percent tax on manufacturers and importers of medical devices.
• A limit on the tax deductibility of medical expenses for people who pay some of their medical costs out of pocket.
• A limit on tax-sheltered health flexible spending accounts.
• An increase in the Medicare payroll tax on single earners making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000.

The delicate balance of tax increases and spending increases in Obamacare will work only if Congress allows the tax increases to take effect, so they can offset the cost of substantial new insurance subsidies and other Obamacare outlays.

But some Senate Democrats are trying to delay at least for one year the tax on medical device manufacturers, which will raise nearly $2 billion in new revenue in 2013 and $20 billion over the next seven years.

In a letter Monday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C. and others asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to work to postpone the medical device tax.

Both Klobuchar and Hagan voted for the ACA and Minnesota is home to one of the biggest medical device makers, Medtronic.

A delay in the tax could be part of the year-end fiscal package. “My guess that it would be part of bigger deal before the end of the year,” Klobuchar told NBC News Tuesday.

The Democrats calling for delay are emphasizing the need for medical device industry jobs.

“We’re focused on this because there’s a number of small start-up companies (which would be affected by the tax),” Klobuchar said.  The medical device tax was set to raise $40 billion over 10 years “and then reduced in half without real negotiation about how it would affect jobs and the industry. So this one, above all to me, cries out for a change.”

She said the IRS regulation spelling out exactly how the tax will be collected and enforced was issued last week toward the end of the year “without giving them (the medical device firms) time to figure out how to comply. So we’re simply at this point looking for a delay and if we can make some changes to reduce or repeal it, that would be the goal,” Klobuchar said.

Hagan said, “There’s so much innovation in this field right now and they do create so many good jobs in our country that we have the risk of losing these jobs to Ireland and to many other countries. And that’s the problem,” said Hagan, who is up for re-election in 2014.

When she added that the tax would have “an adverse effect on jobs throughout our country,” she was asked whether the tax – after the one-year delay that she and Klobuchar are requesting – would have an equally adverse effect on jobs in 2014. “We can certainly look at that over time,” she said. 

J.C. Scott, senior executive vice president of government affairs for the Advanced Medical Technology Association said, "We appreciate Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Hagan's leadership on this issue and also appreciate the broad bipartisan support for preventing the implementation of the device tax which is slated to go into effect Jan. 1. Delay of the tax is an important step, but Congress must fully address the device tax as it works to develop a long-term solution to help our economy move forward, reduce our debt and reform our tax code."

The industry group said that the U.S. medical technology industry supports nearly 2 million jobs and that nearly 43,000 jobs might be at risk if the tax takes effect.

But a Senate Finance Committee aide told NBC News Tuesday, "Medical device companies are expected to enjoy trillions of dollars in growing sales over the next decade, with profit margins that would make Warren Buffett blush. Health reform is providing the medical device industry with 30 million new customers and Medicare is the industry's largest paying customer. Particularly at a time when we're all working to cut our debt, there's no need to single out any industry for a special carve out."

If the call from Democrats such as Klobuchar for delay and “reduce or repeal” reflects a weakening of support for Obamacare’s revenue raisers, that could be worrisome for both deficit reduction and cost reduction since both of those were goals of Obama’s health care overhaul.

Even as they voted for the health care overhaul in 2010, some congressional Democrats said they thought that another one of the tax increases in the law, the tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health insurance plans would never fully take effect because Congress would water it down or repeal it before 2018 when it is set to effect.

Hannah Foslien / AP

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D Minn., speaks at an election night event at the Crowne Plaza on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012 in St. Paul, Minn.

If Democrats delay, reduce or repeal the medical device tax, then the ACA will not cut costs as much as its proponents and the CBO predicted it would.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois made exactly that point in comments to reporters Tuesday: “I’ve met with medical manufacturers in my state. And I think many of them are going to face some serious hardships when it comes to their competitive edge and research. But I’ve also told them quite frankly, ‘We’ve got to make up the revenue. If we’re going to walk away from any part of this revenue, we have to find another source.’”

President Obama expressed optimism in a “framework” for deficit reduction being worked out before Washington disperses for the holidays as he urged Congress to act quickly and extend tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans.

“I believe that both parties can agree on a framework that does that in the coming weeks. In fact, my hope is to get this done before Christmas,” he said, flanked by people who the White House said responded to emails asking them how a preserved lower tax rate would help them.

He said an immediate extension of tax cuts for those Americans would allow Democrats and Republicans to focus on long-term deficit reduction.

“Families and small businesses would therefore be able to enjoy some peace of mind heading into Christmas and heading into the New Year. And it would give us more time than next year to work together on a comprehensive plan to bring down our deficits.”

He also alluded to recent statements by Senate and House Republicans expressing a willingness to consider previously non-negotiable positions, including GOP Rep. Tom Cole’s statement yesterday that Republicans should in fact deal with tax cuts for the wealthiest earners separately from those Democrats want to extend now.

 “I'm glad to see, if you've been reading the papers lately, that more and more Republicans in Congress seem to be agreeing with this idea that we should have a balanced approach,” Obama said.

But House Speaker John Boehner Wednesday firmly rejected Cole’s suggestion and reiterated his position that Republicans are willing to consider new revenue but oppose a hike in any income tax rates.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

President Barack Obama greets middle class people who joined him on stage after he delivered remarks about extending tax cuts for middle class people during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building November 28, 2012 in Washington, DC.

The president’s event, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building’s South Court Auditorium, was meant to highlight a new social media campaign intended to get Americans vocal about what keeping an extra $2,000 on their paycheck would mean – similarly to what the White House did to encourage Americans to get involved over

The catchphrase for the new campaign? “My2K,” or #My2K for those on Twitter.

“Tweet using the hashtag My2K or email, you know, post it on -- on a member of Congress' Facebook wall. Do what it takes to communicate a sense of urgency. We don't have a lot of time here. We've got a few weeks to get this thing done,” Obama said.

“It's too important for Washington to screw this up,” he continued. 

In a clash on the Senate floor Monday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said that Majority Leader Harry Reid’s planned move to change the Senate filibuster rule could jeopardize chances of reaching a deal on avoiding tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of the year.

“We have huge issues before us here at the end of the year, much of which will probably carry over into next year,” McConnell said in a debate with Reid that lasted nearly 30 minutes. “It’s a time that we ought to building collegiality and relationships and not making incendiary moves that are damaging to the institution and could have serious ramifications on our ability to work together here at the end of the year.”

The filibuster is the Senate tradition of unlimited debate on bills and nominations. Under current rules, a filibuster can be ended only by a vote of three-fifths of all senators, or 60 senators.

Reid said he’s not proposing that the Senate do away entirely with the filibuster, “just that we do away with filibusters on motions to proceed,” the procedural step that precedes a final debate on a bill or a nomination. 

Toby Jorrin / AFP - Getty Images

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaks at the White House after meeting with US President Barack Obama on November 16, 2012 in Washington,DC.

Reid called his proposed rule change “minor” and an attempt to make the Senate “more efficient” – but McConnell vehemently disputed that. “This is no small matter, this is a big issue about the future of this country and how this institution ought to be operated,” the Kentucky Republican said. 

McConnell accused his Democratic counterpart of intending to “break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate.”

He pointed out that under the current Senate rules it takes 67 senators to enact a rule change.

But Reid may move in January as soon as the Senate convenes for the new session of Congress to change the rules by a simple majority vote.

McConnell said Reid had used his power under the Senate rules to prevent Republican senators from offering amendments on proposed bills. 

“He alone, out of 100 of us, gets to decide who gets to offer an amendment,” McConnell complained. “In other words he gets to pick our amendments for us.”

Therefore, McConnell said, the Republicans had responded by slowing or blocking debate through filibusters.

If Reid wants to defeat filibusters, McConnell suggested, he should “use the fatigue factor to grind down opposition” by forcing senators who were filibustering motions or bills to stay on the Senate floor and keep speaking.

But Reid said that “to the average American, these reforms are just common sense… America believes Congress is broken. Once again the only ones who disagree are Mitch McConnell and Republicans in Congress.”

He added later, “As I’ve traveled this country, people said, ‘Do something to change the Senate so we can get things done.’”

Some Republicans appear to be softening what was once a hard stance on their no-taxes pledge as the end-of-the-year deadline on the so-called “fiscal cliff” approaches.

But it’s not clear how far they would go – if they would raise rates on the wealthiest, as President Obama wants, or if they are simply willing to go along with eliminating some loopholes and deductions to raise revenue. And those who have been outspoken on the topic thus far are not seen as the key players in the ongoing negotiations.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Select Committee on Intelligence ranking member Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) gets on the Senate subway as he leaves after a hearing on the Benghazi attack November 16, 2012 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

“I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia told a local TV station from his home state. “If we do it his way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”

Chambliss is one of several congressional Republicans who have indicated they might break with an anti-tax pledge pushed by activist Grover Norquist.

On the Sunday shows and Monday morning TV, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bob Corker (R-TN), as well as Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) -- the House minority leader -- and Peter King (R-NY), joined Chambliss in downplaying the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” Norquist’s 58-word pledge has been a mainstay in Republican politics since 1986. In 2011, every GOP presidential hopeful, including Mitt Romney (and excluding Jon Huntsman) signed it.

“I agree with Grover — we shouldn’t raise rates,” Graham said on ABC, “but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can’t cap deductions and buy down debt.” Graham added, “I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform.”

Corker told CBS on Monday: “I’m not obligated on the pledge. I made Tennesseans aware, I was just elected, the only thing I’m honoring is the oath I take when I serve, when I’m sworn in this January.”

King, of New York, said on Meet the Press Sunday: “I agree entirely with Saxby Chambliss -- a pledge you signed 20 years ago, 18 years ago, is for that Congress... I think everything should be on the table.”

Norquist, in fact, says the fact that no House Republican has voted for a tax increase in 22 years is directly a product of his pledge. Norquist does not just mandate that lawmakers not vote for tax increases, but also that any bill they sign onto has to be “revenue neutral.”

In other words, cutting deductions and loopholes, for example, would also be out if not offset by further tax cuts. But Republicans and Democrats face an end-of-the-year deadline to try and figure out a way to avert the steep military and domestic spending cuts and taxes going up for everyone when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year.

That some senators appear ready to talk revenue is not as significant as what House members say. It is widely believed that a deal would be struck between the White House and the House GOP, not with the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner has said that “revenue” is on the table, but the president wants to raise rates for the wealthiest. Obama campaigned on the idea, but it’s not at all clear whether the House Republican rank-and-file would sign on to any rate increase.

Cantor, who wields some influence with the GOP conference’s more conservative members, is seen as more of a keystone, and he, too, seemed willing to go along with at least some revenue increases.

“There has been a lot said about this pledge,” Cantor said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday. “When I go to the constituents, it’s not about that pledge. It’s about trying to solve problems. House Speaker John Boehner went to the White House and said, ‘Hey, Republicans in the House are willing to put revenues on the table.’ That’s a big move.”

“We were elected to fix problems,” Cantor said, before adding, “Even if you raise all those taxes, it doesn’t fix your problem.”

In a follow-up interview, Cantor’s office stressed that he remains against raising tax rates.

“Republicans aren't against tax rate hikes because of any one man or pledge,” spokeswoman Megan Whittemore said. “We are against hiking rates, because they're bad for the economy and hurt jobs. We've put ideas on the table that bring more money in while keeping tax rates where they are to produce job growth. It's now time for President Obama to put his ideas on the table for spending cuts and entitlement reform if he truly embraces a balanced approach.”

For his part, Norquist isn’t backing down. In a statement to NBC News, he took shots at the GOP senators and expressed confidence that no one would violate the pledge.

"Chambliss has been pushing this line since he joined the Gang of Six,” Norquist said. “Lindsey Graham has for two years said he would raise taxes if he got a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts through entitlement reform that could not be undone. There is no news in these two 'changing.'”

And he added, “They have not voted for a tax hike. They have had impure thoughts on present. Their impure thoughts did not change a single GOP vote in the 2011 fight over the debt ceiling which had a real deadline looming. One might have argued that the pledge died in 1990 when a sitting president and many in House leadership broke the pledge. However, the opposite happened, the pledge became more powerful when breaking it was seen to have very real consequence in 1992. After the 1994 election a majority of the House and Senate had signed the pledge."