The House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday night to avoid the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ – the set of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin January 1, 2013 (Tuesday). The bill makes Bush-era income tax cuts permanent for most Americans while letting them expire for top earners.

 

The other half of the fiscal cliff, the automatic spending cuts Congress imposed on itself last year, were not dealt with, however. A decision on what to do about those so-called “sequestration” cuts has been postponed for at least two months.