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President Barack Obama and the Republicans have struck a deal that would extend tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 by President George W Bush while extending public benefits for the unemployed, if approved by Congress.

Furious liberals say Mr Obama caved into Republican demands for lower tax rates for wealthy Americans at a time of soaring budget deficts, while US media outlets are calling it a victory for the Republicans, who for the moment control neither the House nor the Senate.

The editorial board of the the deal as "a win for the Republicans and their strategy of obstructionism and a disappointing retreat by the White House":

We suppose it could have been worse. The deal could help to stimulate the weak economy. And if the Republicans had blocked an extension of unemployment benefits, as they were threatening to, millions of Americans would have suffered greatly.

But the country can't afford to continue tax cuts for the rich indefinitely. And by kicking the issue down the road to 2012 - a presidential election year - it all but guarantees more craven politicking then.

In terms of the deal's effect on the economy, . He says the deal is "anti-contractionary rather than stimulative" because it prevents government programmes from expiring rather than pumping much needed new money into the economy:

What you can say about this policy is that, for the moment, it doesn't make things much worse, and it probably makes them a bit better. This is not the government making a major new commitment to the recovery. It's the government not getting in the way, and maybe doing a bit to help, the horribly slow recovery that's happening anyway.

ABC News's man at the White House, Jake Tapper, the White House will have two arguments in its bid to sell the deal to the Congressional Democrats who will have to ratify it in a vote:

1) We wanted a fight on these tax cuts, and Congressional Democrats never took up the charge and held a vote;

2) This is a good deal - and we weren't willing to let taxes go up on middle class Americans, or to deprive the unemployed of insurance benefits, just to prove a political point.

Veteran liberal commentator , the Guardian's American editor-at-large, writes the White House should not walk away from this thinking it got a good deal, but the fact a compromise happened at all is progress of a sort:

It didn't have to come to this, and these last couple of weeks have been a real political nadir for Democrats. Obama still failed here to keep a central campaign promise that was important to liberals - that tax rates go back to 39% on the top 2% of earners. He and all the Democrats need to learn here that they have to fight harder and earlier and with more unity (yeah, right!) in the future, or they're just going to keep ceding ground.

At the blog of conservative journal the National Review, John Pitney, a professor of American politics, that what liberals decry as Republican intrasigence on the tax issue is a sign the democracy is functioning as its founders intended:

The president compromised on taxes because he didn't want to have a big, ugly across-the-board tax hike next year. The House Democrats didn't pass a tax hike for the rich because they knew it would die in the Senate, leaving them with a risky vote on their record and nothing to show for it... In other words, the separation of powers, bicamerialism, and federalism are all kicking in to check the Obama administration. The system is working in comformance to the owner's manual, otherwise known as .