Settle down, tough guy…

(USA Today)– As fellow Democrats accuse him of caving in to Republicans on the tax cut deal, President Obama is repeatedly promising them that he will fight the GOP aggressively when it takes over the U.S. House and adds senators next month.

“I will be happy to see the Republicans test whether or not I’m itching for a fight on a whole range of issues,” Obama said last week. “I suspect they will find I am. And I think the American people will be on my side on a whole bunch of these fights.”

Obama has echoed this pledge repeatedly as House and Senate Democrats wrestle with the package that also includes items sought by Obama, including a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits and an array of middle class tax cuts. In a conference call with political supporters, Obama said: “We are going to go right back at Republicans in showing why the things that they wanted in this compromise don’t make sense.”

One of those fights will be over the very thing that some Democrats are angry about: The two-year extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest Americans.

“When they expire in two years, I will fight to end them,” Obama said. “Just as I suspect the Republican Party may fight to end the middle-class tax cuts that I’ve championed and that they’ve opposed.”