Congress prepares to reverse fiscal cliff fallout The Senate voted 89-8 to pass the compromise, with only a handful of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats objecting to the bill. In order to secure Republican support, President Barack Obama was forced to abandon his campaign pledge to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000 a year and settle for a threshold nearly twice as high. The concession enraged liberals and Senator Tom Harkin, one of the Democrat dissenters, said the bill was "grossly unfair to middle class Americans." Mr Obama praised the Senate's actions, saying: "While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay." Among the Republicans who balked at the compromise was Marco Rubio, the young Florida senator who is expected to be a front-runner for the party's 2016 presidential nomination. "I just couldn't vote for it," Mr Rubio said. I ran, just two years ago, on the idea that I wanted to be part of solving the long-term problems this country faces. Congressman Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican close to the party leadership, urged his colleagues in the House to pass the Senate's bill before financial markets reopened. "We ought to take this deal right now, and we'll live to fight another day, and it's coming very soon on the spending cut," he told MSNBC.