Reuters:
Pelosi won't hold vote on Obama's tax plan -aide
Dec 9 (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not bring President Barack Obama's current proposed tax plan up for a vote in her chamber, an aide said on Thursday.
The aide said Pelosi would require changes be made to the measure that most of her fellow House Democrats formally opposed by approving a resolution of opposition to it. The aide said: "She (Pelosi) will honor the resolution."
Looks like the resolution actually might have some teeth after all.
Update: A bit more from Politico, including an on-the-record quote from Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly:
While this doesn’t necessarily scuttle the whole tax deal, it is “highly unlikely” that the tax-cut agreement will come to the floor as is, according to senior Democratic aides. A tax compromise could still pass if an overwhelming majority of Republicans voted for it alongside several dozen Democrats. But at this point, Democrats are making it clear they want changes before anything comes to the House floor.
Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said that “this means we will not bring this [agreement] to the floor as is. It has to be changed."
Daly would not outline what revisions House Democrats specifically are seeking, but he did say that Pelosi would stand by today's caucus resolution.
Update: With the caveat that I'm not basing this on any inside knowledge, I wonder if the estate tax provisions might be a focal point here. Yesterday, Chris Van Hollen singled them out as the part of the deal that he was most opposed to and said he would have trouble voting for it unless they were removed. Given that he's in a leadership role, that very well could be what's at play here. Of course there's much more than the estate tax that's wrong with this package, but if House leadership still wants to bring it to the floor for a vote, it's hard to see how they could change the deal much more fundamentally (at that point, you might as well scrap the deal and start over, which wouldn't be a bad idea).