After threatening to amend the Senate’s fiscal cliff bill to include spending reductions, the House passed the measure Tuesday evening by a vote of 257-167, with 85 Republican votes. 151 Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and 16 Democrats voted against the bill. The “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” now goes to President Obama for his signature.

During debate, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) urged Republicans to support the bill, arguing that it “settles the level of revenue Washington should bring in.” The GOP has indicated that it would not support revenue increases in the upcoming battles to raise the debt ceiling, turn off the sequester cuts, and keep the government running through a continuing budget resolution. Instead, conservative lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have said that they will take advantage of these critical debates to extract deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

“I just don’t want the gentleman’s statement that this settles permanently how much revenue will be made available,” Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) said in response to Camp. “The President has made clear there has to be a balanced approach and no one should be misled into thinking otherwise. No one.”

As the House began voting on the measure, Grover Norquist gave his blessing, tweeting that since the vote took place in the new year — after the Bush tax cuts have technically expired — “Every R voting for Senate bill is cutting taxes and keeping his/her pledge.”

On his way out of a House Republican Conference meeting, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) said the bipartisan “fiscal cliff” compromise will “go back to the Senate,” the National Review’s Robert Costa reports. If true, this would mean the House will not agree with the compromise negotiated Monday by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Breaking: Leaving mtg, Rep. Spencer Bachus says deal will “go back to the Senate.”

— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) January 1, 2013

A just-released analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would increase the nation’s budget deficit by nearly $4 trillion over the next ten years (as compared to allowing the tax cuts to expire and deep spending cuts to take effect).

In an interview Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) confirmed that Congressional Republicans plan again to use the upcoming debt limit to hold the nation hostage to their demands for massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security. His comments echoed earlier remarks by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and anti-government activist Grover Norquist.

Raising the debt ceiling does not mean spending more money — it merely allows the administration to take out the necessary debt to pay for the spending already authorized by Congress and the interest on the debt that has already been approved by Congresses past. While the nation reached the current debt limit yesterday, the Department of the Treasury is using accounting measures to keep the government from default for the next couple of months.

But McCain told CNN that Republicans would again block legislation to keep the nation from defaulting on its obligations, unless they can force major cuts to vital entitlement programs — even though doing so would be highly unpopular:

WOLF BLITZER (HOST): Are you going to use the raising of the debt ceiling in February or March, Senator McCain, as leverage to get what you want from the president?

McCAIN: I think there’s gonna be a whole new field of battle [laughs] when the debt ceiling rolls around. Most of us have pledged that we’re gonna have to… before we vote again to address the debt ceiling — even though it may be at great political cost — we’ve got to address spending, and that means entitlements. We’ve got to sit down together and get us back on a path… look, we just added, what was it, $2.1 trillion in the last increase in the debt ceiling, and spending continues to go up. I think there’s gonna be a pretty big showdown the next time around when we go to the debt [limit].

Watch the video:

Ironically, McCain was among those most critical of phantom Medicare “cuts” in the Obamacare legislation, calling reductions in the program “a price that Americans should not be asked to pay.”

But now, McCain and other Republicans are making it clear: either programs protecting the health and financial solvency of American seniors must be significantly cut — or they will thrust the nation into an economic calamity unheard of since the Great Depression.