The bill's progress has not much resembled Washington's last raids on the tax code. President Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut passed by super-majorities in the House and the Senate, while President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cut - sold at first as a way to spend a surplus, then as a way to combat a recession - attracted 13 Democratic votes in the House and 12 in the Senate. In 2010, an even larger number of Democrats voted to extend the Bush-era tax rates for people making less than $400,000, fearful that cutting them back would lengthen the Great Recession.