Let's Make a Deal: Obama Poised to Break Campaign Promise and Extend Tax Cuts

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2010— -- President Obama appears poised to break one of his biggest campaign promises and agree to extend tax cuts to all Americans, not just those who make $250,000 or less, something Republicans have been demanding for months.

The payback for the president: he will get an extension of unemployment benefits.

"I think it's pretty clear now taxes are not going up on anybody in the middle of this recession. We're discussing how long we should maintain current tax rates," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this morning on NBC's Meet the Press.

In exchange, McConnell said he could agree to an extension of jobless benefits as part of a tax cut package.

"I think we will extend unemployment compensation," he said. "We've had some very vigorous debates in the Senate. Not about whether to do it but whether to pay for it as opposed to adding it to the deficit. All of those discussions are still under way."

For Democrats, giving in on taxes to get unemployment benefits extended is a tough pill to swallow.

"We're moving in that direction," Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said. "And we're only moving there against my judgment and my own particular view of things.

"It appears that the Republican position is ... we have to continue the Bush economic policies," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "And the Bush economic policies of tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals have led us into this recession, cost us 15 million jobs, have utterly failed."

Obama now admits he may give in -- or, as some Democrats say, "cave in" -- to Republican demands to continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans.