Deal! After negotiations took Congress late into the night Tuesday, the House passed a Senate-approved bill to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making under $400,000 and families making under $450,000—allowing taxes to rise on the highest-income Americans. Speaker John Boehner voted for the bill, while House Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted against it. President Obama said at a press conference Tuesday night, "The one thing that I think, hopefully, the new year will focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinkmanship, and not scare the heck out of folks quite as much.”
The New York Times' Jonathan Weisman wrote Tuesday about the internal power struggle within the Republican Party, as House and Senate GOP members failed to rein in 151 of its House members who voted against the deal Tuesday night.
Plus, world markets are surging in response to the country's 11th-hour fiscal cliff deal.
And now that the first steps of a fiscal cliff deal are in place, check out five "sleeper issues" that Washington could face in the coming year, courtesy of National Journal.