E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSUpdated at 2 p.m. ET -- At a campaign-style event at the White House Friday, President Barack Obama invited congressional leaders to the White House next week for talks on how to avoid spending cuts and at least some of the tax increases scheduled to occur in January. But he insisted that tax increases on the wealthiest Americans must be part of any deal.
NBC's Brian Williams anchors President Obama's first post-election appearance, in which he calls on Congress to work with him to avoid the fiscal cliff and get the economy moving again.
In a statement at the White House, Obama indicated he will meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner next week "so we can start to build consensus around the challenges that we can only solve together."
The president was referring to $64 billion in automatic spending cuts that will take effect in January if a deal cannot be reached. Those cuts are mandated by the Budget Control Act that Obama signed into law last year.
In his first White House appearance since defeating Republican Mitt Romney in Tuesday's election, Obama said he was "open to new ideas" to avoid what is known as the “fiscal cliff.” But he also dug in his heels by insisting that additional revenue be part of the solution.
“We can’t just cut our way to prosperity,” he said, adding that he would insist that “the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes” – a line that drew applause from the group of supporters standing behind him on stage. Obama defines "the wealthiest Americans" as single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and couples with annual earnings in excess of $250,000.
And he claimed an election mandate, saying, “On Tuesday night we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach.”
Obama also repeated many of the themes of his re-election campaign speeches in Friday’s remarks – such as his view that more federal infrastructure spending is needed.
Obama did not take any questions.
Budget analysts call the combination of automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to occur at year end the fiscal cliff.
As part of an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, Obama and congressional leaders must also agree how much taxes ought to go up and which taxpayers will be hit by tax hikes. According to the Congressional Budget Office taxes will increase by more than $400 billion in 2013 under current law.
Adding to the pressure to design a deal that would avoid the fiscal cliff, the CBO on Thursday repeated its previous warnings that the spending cuts, combined with scheduled tax increases, would probably cause a recession next year.
Specifically the CBO said in its Thursday report that the tax increases and spending cuts would cause the unemployment rate to rise to 9.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to a jobless rate of 7.9 percent in October.
In a video released by the Obama campaign, a tearful president thanks his campaign workers before he sets off to tackle second-term issues including taxes, the debt and replacing as many as five high profile secretaries in his Cabinet. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
The tax increases would raise the average tax burden by almost $3,500 per taxpayer in 2013, according to According to the Tax Policy Center. This would happen because the current income tax rates and some tax breaks are scheduled to expire or shrink on Dec. 31. Among them, the popular middle-class tax break, a $1,000-per-child tax credit for each child age 17 and younger, would be cut in half.
In addition, starting on Jan. 1, the Affordable Care Act imposes a $20 billion tax increase on people with incomes above $200,000, or $250,000 for joint filers. Adding to the tax increase, a temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax is set to expire at year end.
The president has argued for raising taxes on Americans with incomes over $200,000 and over $250,000 for married couples who file jointly.
But the exact mix of tax increases and who must pay them will be the subject of intense negotiations between the president and congressional leaders over the next few weeks.
Before February Obama and congressional leaders must also work out a deal to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit.
After re-election, House Speaker John Boehner says he believes the House GOP and President Obama will find common ground "to avoid the fiscal cliff." Boehner is also talking less harshly about the president's signature health care law.
In a press briefing Friday morning, Boehner said he is willing to work with Obama and congressional Democrats, but remains opposed to raising the tax rates for any Americans.
“The members of our majority understand how important it is to avert the fiscal cliff,” he said. He sketched out his opening bargaining position: Extend current tax rates for one year, allowing Congress time to entirely redesign the tax code, eliminating some tax deductions and preferences – and pass “entitlement reform.”
He made the case that “by lowering rates and cleaning up the tax code we know that we’re going to get more economic growth. It’ll bring jobs back to America – it’ll bring more revenue.”
The revenue question is crucial: Because the U.S. economy remains anemic, federal revenue has still not reached its pre-recession peak. While revenue increased for third consecutive year in fiscal 2012, it is still 5 percent below the 2007 peak.
Boehner warned about the spending pressure from growing entitlement programs: “We’re spending a trillion dollars more than what we take in. You can’t continue to do that. This is year two of a 25-year demographic bubble. …. Ten thousand Baby Boomers like me retiring every day.”
He said “everything on the revenue side and on the spending side has to be looked at.”
Obama and the Democrats go into the bargaining over fiscal policy with voters having given them a stronger bargaining position.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
President Barack Obama addresses supporters during his election night rally in Chicago, Nov. 6, 2012.
In Tuesday’s balloting, Democrats scored a net gain of at least six seats in the House, which was better than most analysts had predicted, and they exceeded expectations by gaining two seats in the Senate, dashing GOP hopes for a takeover of the upper chamber.
But Boehner said Tuesday that “The American people re-elected a Republican majority (in the House) and I’m proud of the fact that our team in a very difficult year was able to maintain our majority.”
But showing that the election outcome had altered his strategy, Boehner signaled a retreat Thursday from Republican calls for total repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
“I think the election changes that,” Boehner said in an interview with ABC News. “It's pretty clear that the president was re-elected, Obamacare is the law of the land.”
But he added, “I think there are parts of the healthcare law that are going to be very difficult to implement. And very expensive. And as the time when we're trying to find a way to create a path toward a balanced budget everything has to be on the table.” The speaker may try to make rescinding parts of the law an ingredient of any deal he tries to strike with Obama and Reid.
Leave a Comment:
liberal scum the party of leaches,i hope america go bankrupt and then and maybe then americans will wake up and see the liberal scum and thier bedpartner are useless and vote to restore this country and stop giving in to the liberal scum.there is no differance between liberals ,obame ,muslum brotherhood,hitler,stalin,musilini,emperor of japan,and all of the other dictators,all want or wanted power,all want or wanted for the destruction of america as we know it
Push the Republicans off the fiscal cliff
ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country
JFK would vomit if he knew what the democrat party has become
Harold. Please come back and try again. The braindead repuke dopes are running wild.
It was too bad that Harold Camping did not succeed in taking away the base of the repuke dunce party.
Harold Camping, the evangelical king, got 500,000 of these pathetic radical right wing braindead evangelical Children of the Corn zombies to give up all of their worldly possessions to go meet and stay with the man in the sky. They are so easily brainwashed. Camping, considered the evangelical king by many because of his 50 year history of bible study, promised to take away these right wing bible nuts on the last Rapture Day on Oct 21, 2011. All of his calculations were based on "biblical facts" When it did not work, he then realized that the bible in most part is "pulp fiction".
Yet these braindead fools continue to believe that there are men and boys with wings on flying around blowing horns.
The only thing to do to cure these zombies is to send them all back to the Garden of Eden on Noah's Ark to start over again, unless of course, they fall off the end of the flat earth.
These braindead idiots would still be believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, if their parents did not tell them otherwise. It is unfortunate that they don't believe their leaders, when they tell them how worthless repuke lyin Willardo, the Mexican Mormon Moron tax evader, bankrupter, draft dodger, job outsourcer and Etch A Sketch Champion is.
Many of them still believe that the earth is flat and that dinosaurs never existed. It is all a liberal conspiracy.
Let me see if i got this right....save 64 billion but keep borrowing 40 cents for every dollar spent resulting in 1 trillion per year added to the already 16 trillion dollar national debt. Can you say 21 trillion debt by 2016?
The Fiscal Cliff really isn't that big of a deal. We were fine economically under the Clinton tax rates, we'd be fine under them again.
We don't want any tax hikes, but if we have to, the Republicans have to force the Dems to raise taxes on everyone across the board by whatever amount they choose. The people not paying their fair share are the bottom 47%, and they have to have their rates hiked, if anyone else does.
Hikes only on the rich are off the table, has to be on everyone, everyone has to contribute.
And the Republican House cannot accept any deal unless the 2.5 dollars in cuts per 1 dollar in tax hike is specific and directly off the next annual budget. No window dressing/BS. If we hike taxes across the board by 100B, then 250 billion must be cut off that year's budget.
Why is our national treasury so in debt when it was fine as Clinton handed it over to GW Bush Jr./Cheney? Econ experts can give that lesson in 30 minutes or less with just a few reasons why - lowering income tax rates especially on the very wealthy where most of the income gains went since Bush took over (yes notice you have not gotten a salary raise worth diddly squat for 12 years, but the 1% have gotten richer faster than ever in that time)....costs of national security/Big Brother Works had to take off after 9/11 and GOP starts two wars = one on lies and not needed and the other extended because they did not focus on it and get the job done of getting Bin Laden/Al Queda/Taliban out of Afghanistan...and a few other reasons like the Housing bubble (remember when houses everywhere doubled in price in two or three years for no reason..., then for some reasons the banks and brokers all needed bailouts because they gave loans/bought loans that should never have been made by graduate degreed business experts)....
So where has all that taxpayer money in the treasury gone that could have been put into infrastructure and clean energy and emergency response/recovery and veterans assistance and keeping college education costs down and rebuilding/investing in our public schools....? Up in smoke withe the repub agenda per paragraph above...but they and their friends in high places got very very rich didn't they from 2001-2008?
You are getting debt and deficit confused. We had a 5 trillion dollar debt at the end of Clintons term
Soon you will find out that even the poor are now rich and will be taxed
What a POS this s c u m b a g is, Libtards and takers have destroyed this once great nation.
With more than a little help by an imbecile named George W. Bush
I want my cake and could I please get a fork so I can eat it too?
'Fiscal cliff' looming, Obama to spell out second-term agenda
His Agenda is to spend spend spend..Same old crap we been hearing for the past 60 years..You will know when the USA people are really hurting.There be so much theft there be no jail room..
My way or the highway for Americans is Obummer's FORWARD approach.
Wow Jim! Am I the only one that couldn't make any sense of that post? I say let the spending cuts come. It will be awful hard to make big government with no money to pay anyone. It would be such a weird concept to only be able to spend what you actually take in, wouldn't it?
Listening to Boehner, now I know where "Flip" Romney got his backtracking from. I'm sure everyone is aware that Grover Norquist is on a suicide watch. Washington sources claim that after he heard the election results he tried hanging himself but the string broke. One source suggested he was using "kite" string. Karl Rove is the Bernie Madoff of election investmensts. With the millions he got from Republican high rollers, and what they received in return, was next to "ZILCH!" Hope Trump didn't fork out. If he did, another declaration of bankruptcy is on the horizon. Of course he's only declared bankruptcy three times!
Billy
Now that is funny !
Democrats think that compromise means that they should get things their way. They don't know how to change from tax and spend. We are on our way to being a Third world country.
galactapus, you lost the election....your party can't grasp the new realities of the 21st century, the President just said exactly what he said during the campaign...and we approved his message. If it makes you feel any better a source very close to Hillary Clinton has told me that she has been approached about replacing the retiring Supreme court Justice in April of next year. Rumor is that she LOVES the idea. GOD BLESS AMERICA !!!
Tea party will not go for tax increases. Republicans cannot hold on to the house without tea partiers and they cannot win elections with them. They can however generate revenue by eliminating loopholes and curtailing deductions like the mortgage interest deduction without calling it what it is : a tax increase, a big one for the middle class . With a $16 trillion deficit and a $1trillion a year annual deficit any politician who promises your taxes wont go up is a snake oil salesman
If they could leave the small businesses alone, I would be fine with Obama's tax plans.
But it doesn't. So I stand with Congress until it does.
President Obama and Democrats have given several tax cuts for small businesses. That really means small businesses. It does not mean small business when Boehner says it because he means Verizon and he means Wal-Mart.
New Republican Agenda: ensure that Obama is only a two term president.
Even the Koch brothers can not afford another 4 years of Republican obstruction. Business leaders are demanding action in Washington. It is time to climb down from their soapboxes and get serious about negotiating and actually trying to govern instead of creating sound bites.
The was voting is done, it is time to stop screwing around and start working together. Both sides stop trying to get the upper hand and screwing the other side. The other side are still your constitutes they all need your help. So elections over get to work now! No transition time needed.
Boehner and the gop just don't get it, even after the land slide election. America is NOT an aristocracy, where a few elite people control all the power and wealth, and therefore dictate whats good for the people. I'm sick of hearing what the supposed ruling class is willing to give us. They simply cannot continue to hate all the people groups, except the rich, and win any type of popular support. DUMB, DUB, DUMB!!!!!!!
No wonder this country is in decline... just readng these uninformed, ignorant, posts proves it...
Let It Fall Don't Give In To The Tea Bags or Grover Nut Bag.
Balance what budget, Shamwow never produced one. Just let it crash and start all over.
What will obozo do in the face of a crisis? Just what he has done the last four years: borrow money and deflect blame, borrow money and deflect blame. The only problem with being a socialist is eventually you run out of other people's money to spend.
If China comes to regain some of their principal and interest, maybe we could give them California. That would benefit us and screw them.
Obummer says "he refuses to accept any approach that isn't balanced. "Balanced" is the key word, whos definition of "balanced" is he going to use? The dems or repubs?
LOL...4 more years of grid lock.
Well, since the Dems won, I'm gonna guess theirs..... because they won!
@Airborne
NO ONE WINS...at least not the American people, 4 more years of grid lock. Don't know if it would have been any different if Romney had won.
Compromise is not a word the president or congress are familiar with.