These cloture votes are often referred to as "test votes," because their results are sometimes indicators of who’ll eventually support final passage.

Several Democrats and a few Republicans were expected to vote “no” Monday, but the bill will still muster enough bipartisan support to advance.

About seven in 10 Americans back the tax deal negotiated last week by President Obama and Congressional Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The much-ballyhooed tax package President Obama will prevent rate increases from hitting most American workers starting Jan. 1, but it has generated a lot of bad feelings with both parties.

“Ever since the Reagan Administration, government policy has been making the rich richer, and working people poorer. This is not just about money, it's about power: The super-rich use the money to buy elections and candidates, making it harder and harder to reverse direction. The Obama tax deal is a bad economic stimulus as the rich won't increase their consumption, unfair — and the so-called 'payroll tax holiday' will undermine Social Security,” said John Berg, Professor of Government at Suffolk University in Boston, Mass., who authored “Unequal Struggle: Class, Gender, Race and Power in the US Congress.”

In the wake of Obama’s tax-cut compromise last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent — New Hampshire, gave a stirring 8-hr. 35-min. filibuster-like soliloquy on the Senate floor. The 69-year-old blasted the logic of what he sees as lining the pockets of the wealthy as the US slouches toward insolvency.

He is not alone.  A group of House Democrats, incensed by the deal's estate-tax provision to the wealthy, seemed on the verge of mutiny; one dubbed the pact Obama's "Gettysburg."

Many Republicans are also gritting their teeth over the tax bill.   Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer and many prominent conservative activists have condemned the compromise pact.

Extending the tax rates, of course, garners near-universal acclaim. But Republicans view other parts of the deal, such as the temporary payroll-tax deduction, the $56 billion toward jobless benefits, and myriad Obama-favored tax credits, as terrible compromises.

In a column entitled "Swindle of the Year,” Krauthammer dubbed the tax bill "Stimulus II," referring derisively to the $787 billion bill passed last year and hated by conservatives in arguing that the tax deal would be good for Obama and bad for Republicans.

A grumbling Sen. John McCain of Arizona wrote in a Twitter message that he has “serious concerns,” but will support the agreement because “Americans can’t afford tax increases.”

Krauthammer's column is quickly becoming a rallying cry for critics. He argues that Obama “won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010” and orchestrated the “swindle of the year” by securing the “biggest stimulus in American history,” the columnist has provided ammunition for those who at first were simply uncomfortable with the premise of the deal.