[jonhinson]

The article makes it sound like the bill explicitly raises taxes on 77% of households. This would be false. The bill simply does not extend the temporary tax holiday that was signed into law at the end of 2010. The payroll tax rate goes back to the rate we've had since 1990.

[smsm42]

"Your Honor, the prosecutor makes it sound as if I killed that man with a brick. Nothing could be farther from the truth - I just let the brick go, and some time later, completely independently from my actions and completely beyond my control, the brick fell onto the victim's skull and crushed it. I simply failed to extend my temporary holding over the brick, which I never promised to hold forever, by the way, and fully intended to let it go at some point. Clearly, I can accept no blame for this unfortunate incident and am completely innocent".

There was a tax reduction in 2010 and there is a tax hike in 2013. How adding word "temporary" to it changes anything?

[jonhinson]

I was simply commenting on the semantics of the article. The wording in the title and body claims this bill is the cause of the temporary tax cut expiring. That would be disingenuous. The cause of this "tax increase" is the fact that the original legislation made it temporary. This bill has nothing to do with "...[raising] taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households..."

[smsm42]

Of course the bill is the cause. If they didn't want the tax to raise in 2013, they'd make it permanent in 2010 or extended the current levels in 2012. They did not, which means they fully intended for it to happen exactly like it happened. E.g., have taxes for 77% of households be higher in 2013 then they were in 2012.