The plan that passed will raise $620 billion in revenue over 10 years and pay down the sequester for two months. It only got 85 votes from House Republicans, with 151 voting against it. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was one of the more notable yes votes, though House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., both voted against it.

And though the deal pulls the country back from painful fiscal cliff cuts, it's only temporary. The sequester is paid down for two months, not-so-coincidentally timed with when the government will reach its spending limit and Congress will have to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

From the AP:

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President Barack Obama flew back to Washington from Hawaii after telephoning congressional leaders from his Christmas vacation perch. Once back, he set up a meeting with leaders of both parties at the White House late Friday to make a fresh attempt to find a solution before Monday night's deadline.

A look at why it's so hard for Republicans and Democrats to compromise on urgent matters of taxes and spending, and what happens if they fail to meet their deadline:

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NEW YEAR'S HEADACHE

Partly by fate, partly by design, some scary fiscal forces come together at the start of 2013 unless Congress and Obama act to stop them. They include:

— Some $536 billion in tax increases, touching nearly all Americans, because various federal tax cuts and breaks expire at year's end.

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Aides to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell presented the Social Security proposal, which included a method of calculating benefits with inflation. The plan would lower cost of living increases for Social Security recipients. Democrats were swift to reject the offer.

A Democratic aide told ABC News that the proposal was a "poisoned pill" in the current negotiations. However, it should be noted that President Obama has suggested a similar proposal within the context of negotiations on a broad deficit-reduction deal. Such a measure had been taken off the table in discussions over a scaled-back, short-term agreement.

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Instead, their deal, if a deal they indeed cut, will put off some big decisions about tax and entitlement changes and leave other deadlines in place that will likely lead to similar moments of brinkmanship, some in just a matter of weeks.

Republican and Democratic negotiators in the Senate were hoping for a deal as early as Sunday on what threshold to set for increased tax rates, whether to keep current inheritance tax rates and exemptions and how to pay for jobless benefits and avoid cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.

An agreement would halt automatic across-the-board tax increases for virtually every American and perhaps temporarily put off some steep spending cuts in defense and domestic programs.

Gone, however, is the talk of a grand deal that would tackle broad spending and revenue demands and set the nation on a course to lower deficits. Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner were once a couple hundred billion dollars apart of a deal that would have reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion over ten years.

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The scaled-back offer Obama plans to make to Republican congressional leaders includes renewing George W. Bush-era tax cuts for middle-class earners, most likely for those making $400,000 and below, according to a Senate aide close to the talks. Both aides spoke on condition of anonymity.

The plan would extend unemployment insurance benefits set to expire at the end of the year, prevent a cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors and head off an expansion of the alternative minimum tax, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The plan would delay or replace part of scheduled federal spending cuts, most likely the defense portion, the aide said.

The article quotes Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) saying yesterday that he anticipated a deal but is not optimistic about its prospects. “It’s feeling very much like an optical meeting, not a substantive meeting,” he said.

For the Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still favors a deal that would raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000.

Meanwhile, John Harwood of CNBC tweets from the other side:

[embedtweet id="284688535846518784"]

In other words, this could go on indefinitely.

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The Friday afternoon meeting among congressional leaders and the president -- their first since Nov. 16 -- stood as a make-or-break moment for negotiations to avoid across-the-board tax increases and deep spending cuts on the first of the year.

Obama called for the meeting as top lawmakers alternately cast blame on each other while portraying themselves as open to a reasonable last-minute bargain.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded that any effort at this late date was a long shot. "I don't know timewise how it can happen now," he said.

For Obama, the 11th-hour scramble represented a test of how he would balance the strength derived from his re-election with his avowed commitment to compromise. Despite early talk of a grand bargain between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would reduce deficits by more than $2 trillion, the expectations were now far less ambitious.

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I hope that includes the president.

On a day marked by rumors of action that mainly turned out to be false – thanks in part to a Facebook post by soon-to-be-former Sen. Scott Brown – it was easy to believe the phony blame game that apportions equal responsibility to both sides, even though it's perfectly clear that Democrats have compromised to a fault, while the GOP won't. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid misdiagnosed the problem when he said House Speaker John Boehner was running a "dictatorship" – if he was a dictator, he could have at least passed Plan B. Reid's playing Dueling Floor Rants with the impotent Mitch McConnell could make anyone say "a pox on both their houses."

Of course, Reid was right on one point: The simplest way to resolve at least the looming tax hike problem is for the House to pass the Senate bill that extends the Bush tax cuts for everyone but the top 2 percent of taxpayers. I'm not sure I trust Reid or House Democrats who claim it would get enough Republican votes, plus all the Democrats, to pass the House – never underestimate the power of Tea Party dead-enders in the caucus -- but it would be an interesting test, for all sides.

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"Everyone knows, including the speaker of the House of Represenatives today, that if they had brought up the Senate-passed bill that would give relief to everyone making less than $250,000 a year, it would pass overwhelmingly," Reid said. "Every Democrat would vote for it, Republicans would vote for it. But the speaker, he says, 'No, we can't do that.' It has to be a majority of the majority. So they've done nothing."

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But just two years ago, senior Democrats were saying things like this: "I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster rules. I think that's foolish.” And: “I’m so vehemently opposed to the ideas to fundamentally change the rules of the Senate.” That was Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who really hated the filibuster, but there were others.

“I think as torturous as this place can be, the cloture rule and the filibuster is important to protect the rights of the minority... My inclination is no,” Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor told The Hill's Alexander Bolton when asked about reform in 2010.

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The Democrats took a hard line last night, after top Republicans rejected President Obama's first offer to resolve the "fiscal cliff" on the grounds that it did not address spending cuts seriously enough. From the New York Times, the plan mostly included ways to raise revenues, with the additional promise that $400 billion in entitlement savings could possibly be negotiated next year:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

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1. It’s (probably) unconstitutional: The filibuster appears nowhere in the Constitution and was actually created by accident years later on the advice of the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr.

The Senate didn’t realize it had created a loophole for senators to keep debate open forever until after it was too late, and senators have been trying to get rid of it since 1841. Appropriately, the word "filibuster" comes from the Dutch word for “pirate." In 1917, the Senate created the cloture rule, which allows a supermajority to end a filibuster (the original 67-vote threshold was lowered to the current 60 votes in 1975).

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The other argument is that Democrats are being hypocritical in calling for reform, because they defended the filibuster just a few short years ago when they were in the minority, and thus their efforts should be dismissed out of hand. “Then-Sen. Obama thought it would be wrong to make the changes when the Republicans were in the majority; then-Sen. [Joe] Biden thought it was a bad idea when the Democrats were in the minority; and Harry Reid thought it was an awful idea when he was in the minority because he said no one group should be able to run roughshod over the other group,” said Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who holds the No. 4 position in the GOP leadership.

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Well, not quite nothing. Majority Leader Harry Reid hasn’t detailed his precise reform proposal yet, but it’s likely to feature two main components: 1) Eliminating filibusters on the motion to proceed – meaning that it would take a simple majority vote to bring a bill to the floor for debate; and 2) forcing senators who want to block legislation to engage in actual talking filibusters.

But in an exchange on the Senate floor with an exercised Mitch McConnell Monday afternoon, Reid went out of his way to stress that “we’re not trying to get rid of the filibuster.” Which is why life in the Senate as we’ve come to know it isn’t going to suddenly change in January when Democrats use the “constitutional option” to change the filibuster rules with a simple majority vote.

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Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, is pushing to reform the filibuster, but is facing opposition from Republicans. “I think the backlash will be severe,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said of Reid's plan. “If you take away minority rights, which is what you’re doing because you’re an ineffective leader, you’ll destroy the place. And if you destroy the place, we’ll do what we have to do to fight back.”

From Politico:

Here’s what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering: banning filibusters used to prevent debate from even starting and House-Senate conference committees from ever meeting. He also may make filibusters become actual filibusters — to force senators to carry out the nonstop, talkathon sessions.

“It will shut down the Senate,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Politico. “It’s such an abuse of power.”

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Perhaps the most unappreciated aspect of Senate reform is that it’s hard to get right. Like it or not, the Senate doesn’t want to become a second House of Representatives, running on strict majority party rule. Individual senators want to be able to defend their interests, and they want a legislative process that allows them to do so.

That logic doesn’t really apply to nominations in general. Nor does the logic of caution that leads to a reluctance to commit to majority rule on judicial nominations apply to executive branch picks. Again, agree with them or disagree, most senators (and both parties) are reluctant to allow a president and a slim majority of the Senate to pack the courts with lifetime appointments of whomever they want.

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A potential showdown vote to limit Senate filibusters would not come until January. Democrats are threatening to resort to a seldom-used procedure that could let them change the rules without GOP support, all but inviting Republican retaliation.

That fight is looming as the newly re-elected Obama and GOP leaders prepare to use the lame-duck session of Congress that starts Tuesday to hunt for compromise on the "fiscal cliff" — the nearly $700 billion worth of tax increases and spending cuts next year that automatically begin in January unless lawmakers head them off.

That effort will be contentious enough without added animosity over efforts to weaken the filibuster, a procedural tactic that lets the minority party block bills that lack the support of at least 60 senators. Democrats seem likely to command a 55-45 majority in the new Senate that convenes in January, making 60 a difficult hurdle.

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The Huffington Post reports that although Reid didn't say he would get rid of the filibuster entirely, he emphasized that new reforms would make it more difficult for Republicans to be as obstructionist as they have been. "I have said so publicly, and I continue to feel that way ... I think the rules have been abused, and we are going to work to change them," he said. "We will not do away with the filibuster, but we will make the Senate a more meaningful place. We are going to make it so we can get things done."

"The first thing is the most important thing," Reid continued. "Do away with the motion to proceed. Just do away with it. I favor the filibuster. There's a reason for the filibuster. I understand it. It's to protect the rights of the minority. The Senate was set up to protect the rights of the minority ... so that's the no. 1 issue, and the rest of the stuff we can deal with if there's a filibuster conducted. Those are the kind of things -- if we get the motion to proceed out of the way, we can debate it, one, to cloture. That's good. So that's the no. 1 biggie."

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But there’s one often-overlooked name on the 2012 list of big winners: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In an election that reaffirmed status quo control of the presidency, Senate and House, Reid was arguably the biggest winner among the national leadership troika that includes him, Obama and Republican Speaker John Boehner.

A year ago, with Democrats defending 23 total seats from their huge 2006 freshmen Senate class to just 10 Republican-defended seats, Reid’s chamber majority was in serious jeopardy. But just like the Nevada Democrat’s own 2010 reversal of fortune — despite low approval numbers back home and a weak Democratic cycle nationally, Reid slipped the Republicans’ noose — the Democratic majority not only also cheated death but expanded his Senate control Tuesday night.

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