After months of wrangling over lobby reform, fiscal discipline, and immigration, Republicans came together this week around an issue that has united them in the past: tax relief.

The bill they just passed extends a 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends until 2011 and reins in the reach of the Alternative Minimum Tax for the current tax year.

Republicans called it "tax increase prevention" but it's also a bid at Democratic victory prevention.

The move - the sixth annual tax cut of the Bush presidency - comes as Republicans try to find traction for fall elections that now look iffier for them than they did just a few weeks ago. They plan a second round of tax cuts before the vote in November.

"By virtue of being Republicans, we are born to cut taxes," said Rep. David Dreier (R) of California, at a GOP rally before Wednesday's vote.

Extending the tax cuts first enacted in 2003 had been a top priority for the White House in President Bush's second term. It took nearly a year for House and Senate negotiators to agree on the bill. And although the final product falls short of his request to make the changes permanent, it does give Republicans a rare boost in a year marked by party division and rancor.

"When in trouble, you fall back on the tried and true, and for Republicans, tax cuts are the tried and true," says Norman Ornstein, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

At the same time, House Republicans propose raising the debt limit to nearly $10 trillion - its fifth hike in the Bush years. When they took back the House in 1994, the debt limit was $4.9 trillion.

"The trouble for Republicans is they are going to be forced to increase the debt limit again, having just done it [in March], and this time to an embarrassingly large $10 trillion," Mr. Ornstein adds. "It's hard to argue that these tax cuts will cut the deficits, when they have had to raise the debt limit so many times."

The soaring national debt, some $2 trillion of which is in foreign hands, troubles lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. "If you want to explain how much our national debt is, it's handing out a $100 bill on a street corner every second of every day for 2,500 years," said Sen. Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut, speaking in opposition to the tax bill on the floor of the Senate Thursday.

"I'm not for raising the debt limit. I can't in good conscience do it," says Rep. Joel Hefley (R) of Colorado, who nonetheless voted with all but two of his GOP colleagues for the tax bill in the House on Wednesday. The bill passed the House by a 244-185 vote. Only 15 Democrats supported it.

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