House members meet to review Senate-passed cliff deal Republicans, who control the House, will then gather at 1 p.m. to review the terms of the pact that passed the Senate 89 to 8 in a highly unusual New Year's morning vote. Senior aides predicted the measure would pass the House with bipartisan support, but House leaders have not guaranteed passage, and it remained unclear when a vote would be held. The closed-door meetings are the first chance for the House to review the agreement, which primarily targets taxpayers who earn more than $450,000 per year, raising their rates for wages and investment profits. At the same time, the deal would protect more than 100 million households earning less than $250,000 a year from income tax increases scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. The deal came together barely three hours before the midnight deadline, after negotiators cleared two final hurdles involving the estate tax and automatic spending cuts set to affect the Pentagon and other federal agencies this week. Republicans gave in on the spending cuts, known as sequestration, by agreeing to a two-month delay in budget reductions that would be paid for in part with new tax revenue, a condition they had resisted. And the White House made a major concession on the estate tax, agreeing to terms that would permit estates worth as much as $15 million to escape taxation by the end of the decade, Democrats said. As Washington awoke to the news that the nation had gone over the fiscal cliff, at least briefly, the future remained uncertain for federal employees, even with the delay in mandated budget cuts. As the House considered the Biden-McConnell agreement, its agenda also included a bill that would extend the freeze on basic federal pay rates through fiscal 2014 for federal employees, though it is not clear how many. "While the operations of government will not immediately change, federal agencies continue to face reductions in resources for the remainder of fiscal 2013," said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. These cuts will impact federal agencies and their ability to provide services to the American public, including food and drug safety, border security, nuclear regulation, and much more. Federal employees have been under a freeze on basic pay rates for two years and are expecting a 0.5 percent pay raise after a temporary budget measure expires in March. As the deadline for agreement closed in on Monday, Biden rushed to the Capitol to brief Senate Democrats on the deal, as Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) laid plans for a vote shortly after midnight, when taxes were set to rise for virtually every American.