As Republicans decry a White House "road show" and cabinet officials continue to sound the sequester alarm, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that - even if Congress gives him greater flexibility to target coming budget reductions - rapid cuts without new revenues will still inflict "pain" on the national economy.

"The problem is, when you're cutting 85 billion dollars in seven months, which represents over a 10 percent cut in the defense budget … there's no smart way to do that," he said in a speech in the ship-building community of Newport News, Va. 

Obama's address at a shipbuilding plant came hours after House Speaker John Boehner used blunt language to urge Senate action on a budget fix, saying the upper chamber's members should "get off their ass" to avert the sequester.

In Virginia, Obama warned that the current across-the-board cuts will be particularly damaging for jobs along the state's defense-industry-rich coastline. 

"These cuts are wrong, they're not smart, they're not fair," he said. "They're a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen." 

The backdrop of Newport News Shipbuilding offered a visual aide for the president, who lamented how fiscal scuffles on the Hill have caused uncertainty in the private sector. 

The overhaul of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently docked nearby , has been put on hold due to economic uncertainty surrounding not only the cuts but also the funding of the government which is due to run out at the end of March.

Obama blamed the impasse on Republican unwillingness to compromise on tax reform measures that would raise additional revenue. 

"Too many Republicans in Congress right now refuse to compromise even an inch when it comes to closing tax loopholes and special interest tax breaks," he said. "And that's what holding things up right now."

The president was joined on the trip by the area's Rep. Scott Rigell, a Republican.  

Rigell told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the event that -- although many in his party say the GOP should accept no more revenue-raising proposals from Democrats --  he has advised his Republican colleagues against resisting measures like closing tax loopholes. 

"I don't think that's a wise position and I don't hold that value," he said. 

The trip to Virginia -- a swing state -- comes amid complaints from the GOP that Obama is "campaigning" on the road rather than addressing the solution to the coming budget slashes.

"He has traveled over 5000 miles the last two weeks, and we challenge him travel a mile and half and come to Capitol Hill," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington on Tuesday. "Sit down with Harry Reid and urge the Senate Democrats to take action."

In his comments Tuesday morning, Boehner placed blame squarely on Senate Democrats for failing to propose a fix.   "We have moved a bill in the House twice," Boehner said at a press conference. "We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something." 

Republicans also slammed the White House this week for "scaring" Americans by overstating the consequences of the cuts, which would total $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

That push from administration officials continued Tuesday, with Attorney General Eric Holder warning bluntly that the sequester will make the country "less safe." 

"We’ll do the best that we can to minimize the harm that actually occurs as result of the sequestration, but the reality is there is going to be harm. There is going to be pain," he told a meeting of state attorneys general in Washington D.C. "The American people are going to be less safe." 

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama speaks about automatic defense budget cuts during a visit to Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Tuesday, Feb. 26, in Newport News, Va.

Newly-minted Secretary of State John Kerry, traveling on his first foreign trip in his new post, told embassy staff in Berlin that he sympathizes with their confusion about Washington's machinations. 

"We face tough budget choices, and I know you sometimes scratch your heads - because I do it at home - and say what the hell are those guys doing or not doing as the case may be, and it's frustrating," he said. "And I get it."

And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano summed up her own feelings about the budgetary staring contest Tuesday with a literal slap to the forehead. 

"You know, I've been in government and public service a long time-- 20 years actually," she said, after burying her head in her hands. "I have never seen anything like this." 

NBC's Shawna Thomas and Frank Thorp contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:24 AM EST

The nation’s capital was enveloped in a familiar kind of gridlock late Monday, as Republicans again demanded that President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats act first to put off $85 billion in automatic cuts slated to take effect on Friday.

“The president says we have to have another tax increase to avoid the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the hefty and indiscriminate spending cuts. “Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It's time to cut spending.”

Related: Obama to govs: Push Congress to avert cuts

As Congress returned to work following a weeklong recess, the Obama administration and lawmakers appeared no closer to resolving the automatic spending cuts before their Friday deadline. While both Democrats and Republicans bemoan the cuts as potentially catastrophic for the economy and the national defense, both sides have been locked in a virtual staring match over the sequester.

The end result is that the cuts seem likely to take effect, if only for some limited period of time, come Friday. Both sides spent Monday posturing rather than working toward a solution.

For their part, the House GOP is content to rest upon the two bills they had passed in the last Congress meant to offset the $85 billion in spending cuts with a series of additional, alternative cuts. Democrats, led by Obama, had rejected that alternative as “unbalanced” because it did not include some measure of new tax revenue.

But, buoyed by stronger approval ratings than congressional Republicans, the president has also been generally unwilling to budge from his stance that a sequester replacement would have to include new tax revenue – likely through closing loopholes and deductions – in addition to other spending cuts.

“Unfortunately, in just four days Congress is poised to allow a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts to kick in that will slow our economy, eliminate good jobs, and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure out what to do,” Obama told a bipartisan group of governors at the White House this morning.

The president leaned on the governors to pressure their respective states' congressional delegations to support a compromise agreement.

Obama has relied increasingly on these public events to make his arguments to the public, pursuing a sort of "outside" strategy meant to rally pressure on lawmakers to strike deals on a range of issues. For instance, Obama will travel to Newport News, Va., on Tuesday to highlight the negative toll the sequester would take on that region's defense industry.

For their part, Republicans have derided the president as spending more time on campaigning against the GOP than working toward a deal.

"Instead of using our military men and women as campaign props, if the president was serious, he'd sit down with Harry Reid and begin to address our problems," Boehner said Monday, referencing the dire warnings of furloughed workers and potential pay cuts for some employees involved with the nation's defenses.

Boehner and the rest of the House GOP appeared no closer to relenting on their demand that any final compromise originate in the Senate. After a roller-coaster past two years in the House, in which conservative lawmakers often threatened to upset delicate agreements Boehner had struck with Obama, the speaker has adopted a strategy of deferring to the Senate on many top legislative matters.

Before the recess, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the rest of the Democratic leadership unveiled a sequester proposal that would offset the impending cuts with new taxes on corporations and the ultrawealthy, more modest defense cuts and additional cuts in discretionary spending.

"Congress has the power to prevent these self-inflicted wounds," Reid said Monday on the Senate floor. "We have the power to turn off the sequester."

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio responds to President Barack Obama's remarks to the nation's governors earlier today about how to fend off the impending automatic budget cuts, Monday, Feb. 25 on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Amid the pessimism about the prospects for a deal, Boehner half-heartedly told reporters that "hope springs eternal" that an agreement could be reached by Friday.

"The president can sit down with Harry Reid tonight and work with Senate Democrats, who have the majority in the Senate to move a bill. It's time for them to act. I've made this clear for months now, and yet we've seen nothing," he said.

This story was originally published on Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:18 PM EST

Amid a growing sense that the drastic and automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” are likely to take effect at the beginning of March, House Republicans have spent the last few weeks pinning the blame squarely on President Barack Obama if these cuts take place.

“We’re weeks away from the president’s sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. “And the president laid out no plan to eliminate the sequester and the harmful cuts that will come of it.”

Yet it’s not as though Obama has embraced the cuts, which economists warn could not only cost thousands of American jobs, but also threaten to weaken the national defense because a large portion of them fall disproportionately upon the Pentagon’s budget. Rather, he mimicked Republicans, and pointed fingers.

“In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year,” the president said in his State of the Union address.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, accompanied by the fellow House GOP leadership, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Feb. 5, 2013, to urge President Barack Obama to offer ideas to replace the looming, automatic budget cuts known as the sequester.

The blame game reflects the unpopularity of those cuts; a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month found that 43 percent of Americans oppose letting the sequester take effect, versus 22 percent who favor the automatic cuts. Almost a third of Americans expressed no opinion, though that number would almost certainly drop if the cuts are swiftly implemented.

But the mere fact that sequestration continues to hover over Washington’s budget battles is a direct result of the dysfunction that has come to characterize negotiations between Obama and congressional Republicans over the past two years. Despite both sides’ work to absolve themselves of responsibility for these cuts, there is more than enough blame to spread around.

The sequester was the byproduct of the last-minute deal forged in August of 2011 to raise the nation’s debt limit. As the deadline for default neared, Obama and Boehner struggled to reach an agreement that would give House Republicans the spending cuts they wanted, and allow Obama to prevent a default on the national debt.

That fight itself was somewhat unusual. Republicans, in their zest to extract spending cuts from the president, took the unusual step of demanding cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, a congressional prerogative that had been largely routine in modern history.

According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book “The Price of Politics,” it was the White House that first suggested some kind of triggered spending cuts as part of a compromise to extract more borrowing authority. This is the primary evidence by which Republicans make their charge.

But GOP leaders also no longer acknowledge their own role in pushing the measure through Congress. Boehner told CBS News at the time of the deal that he was happy with the agreement, and “got 98 percent of what I wanted.”

“No one said it's his responsibility alone. We've just pointed out accurately that the only reason it exists is his insistence on it,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said Wednesday. “Given that fact, he, more than anyone, has responsibility to do something about it. And they've done nothing.”

Blame game
The whole point of the sequester, though, was its design – fashioned to be so reckless and deep in its cuts that it would be politically distasteful to lawmakers in both parties, forcing the administration and congressional Republicans to reach an agreement.

In fact, the 2011 agreement also created the so-called “super committee,” the bipartisan, bicameral panel that was intended to generate a comprehensive proposal to replace the sequester with a series of spending cuts, new tax revenue and entitlement reforms.

Their work failed because Republicans and Democrats couldn’t reach an agreement – a prime example of the strident divisions that characterized the last Congress.

Sequestration, of course, was the other prong of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the economically catastrophic combination of those spending cuts and the automatic spending hikes that were set to take place at the beginning of this year. Lawmakers addressed part of the tax component when they passed legislation allowing taxes to rise on household income over $450,000.

But they punted on the sequester for another two months, setting up the end-of-February deadline before these spending cuts take place. And as the onset of the sequester seems more and more like a fait accompli, Republicans and Democrats are now scrambling to assign blame.

GOP lawmakers’ central argument now is that they have passed an alternative to the sequester, though it leans solely on spending cuts and was regarded as dead in the Democratic-controlled Senate before the House even passed the proposal.

That’s at least better, Republicans argue, than the administration. The president has not formally debuted a detailed legislative alternative to the sequester, relying instead on outlining broad parameters and leaving the work to lawmakers.

“If Congress can’t act immediately on a bigger package … then I believe that they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more months until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution,” Obama said on Feb. 5.

He outlined more specific parameters – tax reform, entitlement savings and spending cuts – in Wednesday’s State of the Union that, Obama argued, would make up a more “balanced” replacement for the sequester.

That wasn’t enough for Boehner.

“Republicans have twice passed bills to replace the sequester,” the top Republican said on Wednesday. “It’s incumbent upon the president and Senate Democrats to show us their plan to stop the sequester from going into effect.”

Until then, more buck-passing.

Related:

Obama's State of the Union lands with a thud in Congress

Ahead of the State of the Union on Tuesday night, TODAY's Matt Lauer sat down with House Speaker John Boehner to defend his comments that President Obama lacks courage to fix the nation's growing deficit and explain where he thinks the country is headed.

"Listen, I think the president's out of ideas when it comes to how to fix the economy," Boehner said. "Because everything that he seems to want to do is more tax hikes and more stimulus spending."

Earlier in the day, Boehner told reporters he didn't think Obama had "the guts" to take the steps needed to restore the economy. 

"I think he'd like to deal with it (fiscal problems), but to do the kind of heavy lifting that needs to be done, I don't think he's got the guts to do it," he said. "He understands there is a spending problem. He understands that we need changes and reforms, and we need to solve these problems."

While Boehner accused the president of lacking courage to stand up to his own party, he acknowledged that people could say the same about him and the Republicans he leads in the House.

“Listen, I've had my troubles with my own party. There's no question about it,” he said. “But it was never about the courage to step up and do the right thing for the country.”

Boehner insisted that “the president and I get along fine,” despite his recent combative comments.

“We come from very different worlds. He has a liberal ideology, I come from a more conservative side,” he said. "But having said that, the American people on Election Day gave us a mandate, a Republican Congress and a Democrat president. And the mandate was to find a way to work together. Find common ground." 

The one area where they might find agreement is on immigration reform, on which Boehner said he would be willing to defy those in his party to work with Democrats and pass a comprehensive package.

“We’ll have to see what the bill is. We’ve got to work through this in a bipartisan way. We can’t get the cart before the horse here,” he said.

A more difficult topic to reach agreement upon will be gun control. Boehner said the nation must take a broader look at the issue and examine the source of violence.

“If you look at each of these mass shootings, each of the shooters, all had mental health issues. How could we do a better job there of controlling their access to weapons? What do we do about school safety? There are a lot of things we ought to look at,” he said.

But he didn’t say whether he agreed with the National Rifle Association’s proposal to place armed guards in schools.

“There are a lot of ideas out there. The question is what will truly help bring down the violence in our society,” he said. “I think taking this easy approach on putting more rules on lawful gun owners — remember, they’re lawful gun owners. The people who own guns illegally, they don't pay attention anyway.”

Boehner also showed a softer side during his interview. He discussed a Washington-based scholarship program he supports and his decision to reserve his House box seats during the president’s address for two fourth-grade students from an inner city school.

“You never know. If you give them an opportunity, they might get a big idea. They might follow their dream,” he said.

For those two girls, seeing an African American president address the nation could be a pivotal moment, Boehner said. He acknowledged that while the nation struggles to send more minority lawmakers to Capitol Hill, he’s seen improvement during his 22 years in office.

“I would guess the number of other faces in the congress has more than doubled,” he said. “Our society is making progress. Our society will continue to make progress.”

TODAY's Meena Hart Duerson contributed to this report.

More:

Boehner: Obama doesn't have 'the guts' to cut spending

High school teacher suspended over 'fat butt Michelle Obama' remark

Stop gun violence, kids ask President Obama

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:44 PM EST

In an address Tuesday to the Ripon Society, a Republican-leaning group, House Speaker John Boehner charged that it was the Obama administration's goal to "annihilate" the Republican Party and "shove" it "into the dustbin of history."

Said Boehner:

"And given what we heard yesterday about the president's vision for his second term, it's pretty clear to me that he knows he can't do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans. So we're expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal - to just shove us into the dustbin of history. I've been in these spots before. I remember November of '06, January of '07 -- we've been through these periods before. And you know, our members get down, our supporters get down." 

The speaker continued:

“But listen, we are Americans and we will figure this out. These next couple of weeks, next couple of months, frankly, the next 20 months, are going to be a very difficult period for us. While we want to stand up and fight for more fiscal responsibility, want to stand up and find a way to move tax reform that will help our economy grow, to do the things we believe in, we’re going to be doing it in an environment that is going to be far more hostile than anything that I think we’ve seen for a long, long time.  We’re going to have to make some big decisions about how we as a party take on this challenge.  Where’s the ground that we fight on? Where’s the ground that we retreat on? Where are the smart fights?  Where are the dumb fights that we have to stay away from?"  

Boehner also said that he had to give former college football coach -- and ESPN commentator -- Lou Holtz a pep talk after both Obama's inauguration and his re-election.

"Last night, I got a three-page text from my good friend Lou Holtz, who must have watched the inaugural and then all that blabber on TV…: 'I'm done, finished, the country's over with -- we're not doing this again!' Now, I had already had this conversation with Lou about nine or ten days after the election.  He came in to speak to our 34 new Members. And before he went over to talk to them, he came over to my office, and he was moaning and groaning.  I said, 'Lou, would you stop it?  We're Americans, we'll figure this out!' And I had to spend 15 minutes giving Lou Holtz a pep talk!  I had to do it again last night!"

With inaugural festivities over, President Barack Obama and members of Congress have returned to budget trench warfare.

House Republicans will vote Wednesday on suspending the federal government’s debt limit until May 19 in the latest chapter of this ongoing saga that has consumed Washington for the better part of the last two years.

GOP leaders hope that by passing their bill, they will not only postpone another debt limit confrontation with Obama, but will put the onus on the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass a budget resolution which would set spending levels for federal programs for the coming fiscal year. The Senate hasn't passed a budget resolution since 2009.

At a press conference Tuesday evening, House Speaker John Boehner reminded reporters that although House Republicans have passed budget resolutions for the past two years, “it’s been nearly four years since the Senate has done a budget.”

He said that the Republican debt limit bill will include a provision that if the Congress doesn't enact a budget resolution, members should not be paid.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor added, “If this country needs to incur more debt, Senate, please show us your plan to repay that debt, please show us your plan to control spending.”

Passing a Senate budget resolution, Republicans argue, will require Democrats to show their hand: they will need to vote for additional tax increases.

That theory was given some credibility by comments by the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., who said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Senate adoption of a budget resolution is “going to be a great opportunity for us. Because in our budget that we will pass, we will lift tax reform, which many of my Republican colleagues liked, but it’s going to include (additional) revenues. It’s a great opportunity to get us some more revenues … You’re going to need more revenues as well as more (spending) cuts to get the deficit down.”

Susan Walsh / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio waits for the start of a Joint Session of Congress in the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013.

He added, “We’re going to do a budget this year. And it’s going to have revenues in it. And our Republican colleagues better get used to that fact.”

By eliminating some tax credits, deductions and preferences, tax reform could make the tax system more efficient, helping spur economic growth and generating increased tax revenues.

Senate Democrats could use a budget procedure known as “reconciliation” to enact tax increases – and they would need no Republican votes in order to do so. Under Senate rules, changes considered under reconciliation can’t be filibustered, so they could be enacted by a simple majority, instead of requiring a 60-vote majority.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that he wanted senators to “work to end wasteful tax loopholes and (to) balance thoughtful spending reductions with revenue from the wealthiest among us.”

A few hours later, Reid sidestepped a direct question from a reporter about whether the Democrats plan to use the budget reconciliation process to enact tax increases, referring reporters to Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray, D- Wash.

And in comments to reporters Tuesday, Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., pointedly refused to make any commitment to using the budget reconciliation procedure to undertake tax reform. He said he was committed to working on tax reform and “I want to try to find the process that works best.”

In his response to Reid on the Senate floor, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell signaled his opposition to any new tax increases on top of those which Obama signed into law on Jan. 2 and those included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. McConnell said: “the revenue question has been settled.” Later in comments to reporters, he added, “the tax issue is over.”

McConnell complained that Obama’s “far left-of-center inauguration speech” was “not designed to deal with the transcendent issue of our era, which is deficits and debt.”

He and other Senate GOP leaders sounded like they were on the same page as their House GOP counterparts, thanking the House leaders for putting the focus on the need to enact a budget and to deal with the growing debt.

One reason for a Republican delay in a debt standoff with Obama is to allow the post-inaugural afterglow and Obama’s popularity some weeks to fade. But it’s not clear the Republicans will be in a stronger position politically in May than they are now. And it is also not clear how GOP leaders plan to handle two March spending deadlines which remain in place: the March 1 start of automatic spending cuts and the March 27 expiration of a continuing spending resolution that funds government operations.

The wording of the GOP leaders’ statements leaves the inference that they might well be willing to pass a series of short-term debt limit increases – even though Obama has said he opposes raising the debt limit in short-term increments.

If Republicans think they can use the budget process to enact curbs in the growth of entitlement spending and if Democrats believe they can use the budget process to enact tax increases, then perhaps both sides will end up disappointed.

It all hinges on the willingness of each side to accept trade offs.

It was significant that in his inaugural address Obama said, “We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.” But he said nothing about the danger of the growth of federal debt and addressed entitlement spending only by presenting its virtues. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, he declared, "do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” 

Updated 2:26 p.m. - Republicans will act to push the deadline at which the U.S. government would default on the national debt to mid-April, demanding that Democrats pass a budget in exchange for a long-term extension in borrowing authority.

House Republicans said they will take up legislation next week to temporarily extend the debt limit for three months, past the mid-February deadline when the government, according to the Treasury, would reach its legal limit on borrowing to finance the government's obligations.

"Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said. "Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay."

Recommended: Different attitude greeting Obama's upcoming inaugural

"We are encouraged that there are signs that congressional Republicans may back off their insistence on holding our economy hostage to extract drastic cuts in Medicare, education and programs middle class families depend on," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in response. "Congress must pay its bills and pass a clean debt limit increase without further delay."

Such a move would push the deadline for default to mid-April, around the time at which the House and Senate are typically expected to produce and pass budgets. To secure a longer-term extension in the debt ceiling, Republicans said Friday, the Senate must finally pass a budget.

"Before there is any long-term debt limit increase, a budget should be passed that cuts spending," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told GOP lawmakers at the conclusion of their retreat, according to remarks released by his office.

Republicans have vocally criticized the Democratic-controlled Senate for failing to produce a budget in recent years, a mark of the upper chamber's unseriousness in the eyes of many conservatives. Democrats have used the two budgets authorized by House Republicans as a political cudgel against the GOP; the Senate's failure to pass a budget has been partially meant to escape similar political culpability.

"We are going to pursue strategies that will obligate the Senate to finally join the House in confronting the government’s spending problem," Boehner said. "The principle is simple: no budget, no pay."

Recommended: NBC/WSJ poll - Public lowers expectations heading into Obama's 2nd term

Republicans' new strategy cuts against a strain of thought within the GOP that suggests that default would not be as catastrophic for the economy as many experts have warned. These Republicans have argued for using the debt ceiling deadline -- and the specter of default -- as leverage to extract spending cuts or entitlement reforms from President Barack Obama.

"It is reassuring to see Republicans beginning to back off their threat to hold our economy hostage," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in response. "If the House can pass a clean debt ceiling increase to avoid default and allow the United States to meet its existing obligations, we will be happy to consider it."

But Republicans are facing increasing political pressure to act, and prevent default. The party's favorable/unfavorable rating was near its worst ever in Thursday's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll following a drawn-out battle over the fiscal cliff, a political fiasco many Republicans aren't eager to repeat. And Obama gave a press conference earlier this week explicitly refuse bargaining over the debt limit.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, right, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., left, walk to a second Republican conference meeting to discuss the fiscal cliff bill passed by the Senate Monday night and now awaits a vote in the GOP-controlled House, at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013.

In recent days, high-profile Republicans had steadily backed away from the prospect of defaulting on the national debt, sending signals that they'll extend the nation's borrowing authority for at least a little while longer.

"We will raise the debt ceiling. We're not going to default on our debt," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Republicans' No. 2 in the upper chamber, told the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. "I will tell you unequivocally, we're not going to default."

And Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House Budget Committee chairman and former vice presidential nominee, told reporters at House Republicans' retreat on Thursday that lawmakers were "discussing the virtue of a short term debt limit extension."

They join Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in acknowledging the need for a debt ceiling increase; more and more members of the conservative media have also questioned the political wisdom behind using the debt limit as leverage in the spending debate.

What's more, traditionally GOP-friendly business groups have privately urged lawmakers against wrangling over the debt limit, which has become a factor weighing upon Republicans' strategy.

"There was serious displeasure and concern within the financial services community over the way Republicans handled the debt ceiling issue in 2011," said one business advocate tied into Republican politics. "It was the financial community that helped deliver the resources for a Republican takeover in 2010 and now House Republicans are at risk of jeopardizing their credibility with their free market allies. Cutting spending and helping the economy are not mutually exclusive, but republicans have found a way to make it seem that way in the eyes of voters."

President Barack Obama will deliver the first State of the Union address of his second term on Feb. 12, House Speaker John Boehner's, R-Ohio, office said Friday.

The speaker extended the customary invitation to the president to deliver the speech on Tues., Feb. 12., the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln.

Larry Downing / REUTERS

President Barack Obama hosts a bipartisan meeting with Congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room of White House to discuss the economy in this file photo with Speaker of the House John Boehner.

Boehner wrote in his letter:

Our nation continues to face immense challenges, and the American people expect us to work together in the new year to find meaningful solutions. This will require a willingness to seek common ground as well as presidential leadership. For that reason, the Congress and the Nation would welcome an opportunity to hear your plan and specific solutions for addressing America’s great challenges. Therefore, it is my privilege to invite you to speak before a Joint Session of Congress on February 12, 2013 in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to your response.

Obama's speech is sure to include elements touching on the upcoming battle with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and entitlements -- an outgrowth of the "fiscal cliff" deal at the beginning of this month. The president has also previously said that the recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden's gun violence task force would be part of his State of the Union speech.

Updated 2:14 p.m. -- Ohio Rep. John Boehner, R, won a second term as speaker of the House on Thursday over the dissent of a handful of House conservatives.

Following a bruising first two years as speaker and leader of House Republicans, 10 conservative lawmakers cast votes for someone other than Boehner during a roll call vote in the first hours of the new Congress. Several other conservative Republicans abstained from voting. Boehner received 220 votes of a total of 426 cast.

While Boehner won re-election to the speakership with the overwhelming support of the GOP, he also narrowly avoided the 16 total defections from fellow Republicans that would have triggered a second ballot of House lawmakers on electing a speaker. That would have been the first time a second ballot was needed since 1923, and a mild embarrassment for Boehner.

In remarks after the vote, a characteristically emotional Boehner urged members to resist pursuing "political victory" in lieu of leadership. 

"If you've come here to see your name in the lights or to pass off political victory as some accomplishment, you've come to the wrong place. The door's right behind you," he said. "If you have come here humbled by the opportunity to serve, if you've come here to be the determined voice of the people, if you've come here to carry the standard of leadership demanded not by our constituents but by the times, then you've come to the right place. "

Boehner cited the federal deficit as the overwhelming problem to be addressed by lawmakers, alluding to the need for serious negotiations to solve it.

"As Speaker, I pledge to listen and to do all I can to help all of you carry out the oath of office that we are all about to take," he said. "Because in our hearts, we know it's wrong to pass this debt on to our kids and grandkids, now we have to be willing - truly willing - to make this problem right."

Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the No. 4 Republican in the House, said that Republicans’ support for Boehner was “unanimous,” and no other GOP lawmaker publicly nominated an alternative candidate.

"There's one person I turn to," she said during her nominating speech, "to help point the way forward."

Democrats mostly cast their ballots for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif., for speaker, though a handful of moderate Democrats defected.

In remarks after the vote, Pelosi praised Boehner as a family man and a leader who has won "the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle." 

 First Thoughts: Boehner boxed in

Boehner during his two years as speaker oftentimes struggled to manage an unruly Republican conference that threatened to scuttle deals the Ohio Republican had cut with President Barack Obama and Democrats. Boehner led Republicans to the majority in 2010 thanks to an infusion of energy from the Tea Party, but the demands of these conservatives often pushed Boehner into brinksmanship during battles with the administration over funding the government, extending the debt ceiling, extending a payroll tax cut through 2012 and resolving the fiscal cliff.

At the beginning of the last Congress, Republicans unanimously acclaimed Boehner as their speaker. But during the intervening two years, Boehner encountered internal challenges that threatened to undercut his leadership.

During the high-stakes 2011 debates over continuing government funding and extending the nation’s borrowing authority, jockeying between Boehner and his No. 2, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., were little more than an open secret in Washington. (That dynamic cooled during 2012; while Cantor opposed the final fiscal cliff deal, his and Boehner’s team took great strides toward downplaying any sense of a rift between the two Republican leaders.)

But Cantor received a handful of votes from some conservative and freshman lawmakers during Thursday’s election; one of the other common names was that of former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., one of the most high-profile conservative firebrands from the last Congress who lost his bid for re-election.

The internal Republican discord most strikingly spilled into the public spotlight during the lame-duck Congress, following elections which saw Republicans lose eight seats but retain their majority in the House. Boehner earned enemies from a handful of Republican congressman after the Republican steering committee stripped them of plum committee spots after they were deemed “not team players.” Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, one of the four rogue Republicans, has almost made it a personal mission since then to highlight Boehner’s difficulties with conservatives.

Boehner’s speakership also arguably reached its weakest point during the final days of the 112th Congress when his fallback plan in fiscal cliff negotiations – which would have allowed taxes to rise on income over $1 million – was rejected by conservatives, thereby weakening their speaker’s own bargaining position.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

Members of the 113th House of Representatives recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the opening session at the Capitol, on Jan. 3, 2013.

But Boehner’s chief advantage in winning a second term as speaker stemmed from his lack of a formidable adversary. Though some grassroots conservatives had sought out different challengers to the speaker, none had emerged as a consensus choice during December. When conservatives floated the name of Rep. Tom Price – Boehner had supported Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., over Price in a race for the GOP’s fourth-ranking position – the Georgia Republican quickly quashed rumors that he would challenge Boehner.

And the leaders best-positioned to challenge Boehner – Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, Calif., or even Wisconsin Rep. and former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan – closed ranks around the speaker, tasking Boehner for another two years with one of the most unenviable tasks in Washington: managing the House Republican Conference.

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed to this report. 

As 113^th Congress begins, Boehner finds himself boxed in like never before… But he will still likely win re-election as speaker… The 113^th Congress, by the numbers… Assessing the aftermath of the fiscal-cliff deal: Obama emerges as a winner… But is it just a short-term win?... The re-emergence of McConnell… And the re-emergence of Biden.

Molly Riley / AFP - Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, walks out after a second meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol on Jan. 1, 2013.

*** Boehner boxed in: Exactly two years ago, John Boehner was the toast of Washington. Fueled by the Tea Party gains in the 2010 midterms and facing a humbled president and Democratic Party, Boehner was elected House speaker. Flash forward to today: Boehner likely will once again win election as speaker. But after passage of the fiscal-cliff deal and the House’s inability to pass a Hurricane Sandy relief package, Boehner finds himself boxed in like never before. Roll Call: “Over the past few weeks, the Ohio lawmaker has been raked over the coals by members of all stripes within his own party — first by those seeking less spending in exchange for tax rate hikes, then by those seeking more spending for disaster aid. The public thrashing came to a head Wednesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie … blatantly accused Boehner of political cowardice for pulling a supplemental aid package for those affected by Superstorm Sandy.” (Boehner has since said that getting Sandy relief will be the first legislative priority of the new 113^th Congress.) The one true achievement by Boehner and the House Republicans is that they have turned every spending bill into a debate, which wasn’t the case before, and that is an achievement for the party of small government. But here’s the central question to ask: Is the Republican Party in a better position today than it was two years ago? It’s hard to argue “yes” to that question.

*** But he will still likely win re-election as speaker: As noted above, with today’s start of the 113^th Congress, the House of Representatives will vote to elect a speaker of the House. While it is likely that John Boehner will be re-elected as speaker, per NBC’s Frank Thorp, we could see the first second ballot for speaker since 1923 if 16 conservatives decide to vote against Boehner. Thorp adds that the 113th Congress will convene for the first time at noon ET, after which the House will vote to elect the speaker. Members will be called by name alphabetically and asked for their vote.  This vote is different than typical votes, which are done electronically during a set period of time. The speaker needs a majority of all votes cast to be elected.  If all members were to vote, Boehner would need 217 votes, unless there are members who are absent for the vote, or members who vote "present" (for no one). By the way, it seems that the House No. 2 Republican, Eric Cantor, was caught selling out the king in the Sandy mess. Here was Christie at his press conference: “I was called at 11:20 last night by Leader Cantor and told that authority for the vote had been pulled by the speaker.” Just askin’, but when Cantor decided to share with Christie his version of what happened to Sandy relief, did Cantor know Christie would go public?  Remember all those stories about Cantor and Boehner becoming closer? Um, yeah… how do you spell a-w-k-w-a-r-d?

*** The 113th Congress, by the numbers: The 113th Congress’ partisan breakdown will be as follows: In the House, per NBC’s Frank Thorp: 233 Republicans, 200 Democrats, two vacancies (Tim Scott and Jesse Jackson Jr.) That means once those two seats are filled, it will likely be 234-201.) That’s a slightly narrower breakdown than the 112th, which ended with 240-191, four vacancies. In the Senate, Democrats will continue to control the Senate – but with a slightly larger 55-45 majority (including two independents who will caucus with the Democrats). As NBC’s Carrie Dann reported last month: A record-breaking 20 women will serve in the Senate, while 78 will be seated in the United States House. There will be 16 Iraq and Afghanistan vets of the new members. There will also be four new members who are LGBT, almost doubling the number of openly gay lawmakers. And remember, for the first time in history, white men will NOT make up the majority of the House Democratic caucus. Also, today marks the return of Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) after his stroke. Per the Chicago Daily Herald, Kirk “plans to climb the 45 steps of the U.S. Capitol without the aid of a handrail.”

*** Assessing the aftermath of the fiscal-cliff deal: A win for Obama: Yes, liberals and Senate Democrats think President Obama gave up too much for a deal. And, yes, there's another fiscal fight coming up (more on that below). But he got a deal, proving that the GOP "fever" did break, at least for a while. He also delivered on a campaign promise to raise the taxes on the wealthy (although had to compromise from $250,000 to $450,000), and he got Republicans (!!!) to give him cover in raising taxes -- something Bill Clinton was never able to do. And he protects a fragile, yet growing, economy. It’s hard to see how that isn't a win for the president.

*** But is it just a short-term win? The question is how long that win lasts. After all, we’ll have another fiscal showdown in two months over the debt ceiling, government operations, and the sequester. So what happened over New Year's was a partial surgery -- the patient and the doctors still need to come back to finish the job. Yes, Republicans now have more leverage heading into this debt-ceiling fight. But two things happened over New Year's that are significant: 1) Republicans proved they could support an increase in tax rates and 2) House Republicans also proved that you don't need a "majority of the majority" to bring legislation to the floor. And there is now a path forward for future deals, as the New York Times notes, with the White House working with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But can that last? And who speaks for Republicans? Those are questions over which the Obama White House will have to wrestle.

*** The re-emergence of McConnell: Speaking of the Senate minority leader, so much for the early thought that the Senate -- and Senate Republicans -- wouldn't be a key factor in the negotiations. Given how much the GOP was going to be blamed for going off the cliff, McConnell protected his party, and it allows it to fight on better terrain two months from now. McConnell, who faces re-election in Kentucky next year, pens a Yahoo op-ed saying that he will now be pursuing spending cuts. “Was [the fiscal-cliff deal] a great deal? No. As I said, taxes shouldn’t be going up at all. Just as importantly, the transcendent issue of our time, the spiraling debt, remains completely unaddressed. Yet now that the president has gotten his long-sought tax hike on the ‘rich,’ we can finally turn squarely toward the real problem, which is spending.” Can McConnell politically handle making the right mad by becoming the dealmaker in a year he has to prep for his own re-election in very red Kentucky? And if not McConnell, who? And who speaks for Republicans? If Boehner isn’t going to do anymore one-on-one talks with the White House (and why should he at this point, the trust between the two offices is just awful at this point), who is Boehner’s wing man? Cantor? (See Sandy story.) McCarthy? (He’s tight with Cantor.) Perhaps it’s Paul Ryan? (But does he have his own ambitions?) The White House would certainly like to know; they LOVE the Biden-McConnell gambit, but could other partnerships be created? Say, Geithner-Ryan on the debt ceiling? Or how about Obama-Rubio on immigration?

*** The re-emergence of Biden: Has there been a more underappreciated vice president? Yes, he's the butt of jokes and "The Onion" parodies. But the guy delivered in reaching across the aisle. The whole point in Obama hiring Biden was to have him as his congressional go-to guy; For some reason, many in the West Wing are hesitant to let Biden be Biden and play this role until the very last minute. While Biden allowed himself to be rolled by staffers every now and then in the West Wing, in a second term (with his own eye on the Oval), we’re guessing Biden’s going to less inclined to take a backseat come March.

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Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET: An agreement to stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff won approval in the House late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the law on Wednesday night, the battle over which foreshadowed more fights with Congress over spending.

Following a day of hectic wrangling on Capitol Hill — where the prospects for passing the bipartisan, Senate legislation regarding the fiscal cliff hung in the balance for much of New Year's Day — the House voted 257 to 167 to pass the belated compromise measure over the objections of many conservative Republicans.

The legislation takes steps toward resolving the combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that took effect at midnight on Jan. 1. It preserves tax rates as they were at the end of 2012, except for those individuals earning more than $400,000 and households earning over $450,000. It also allows taxes on capital gains and dividends to go up, and extends benefits of the unemployed. Additionally, the Senate bill delays the onset of the "sequester" — the swift, automatic spending cuts — for two months. 

Fiscal cliff compromise leaves few satisfied

"Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress I will sign a law that raises the taxes on the wealthiest of Americans," Obama said in remarks at the White House Tuesday, "while preventing a middle-class tax hike."

The House vote laid bare some of the internal ideological divisions to plague the GOP over the past two years. More Republican congressmen (151) voted against the Senate bill than for it (85), meaning that Democrats' support was needed to advance the final deal. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took the rare step of casting a vote, and did so in favor of the legislation. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the former Republican vice presidential nominee, also supported the package. But Boehner's top two lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., each opposed the deal.

"Now the focus turns to spending," Boehner said in a statement following the House vote. "The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the ‘balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

While the last-minute action on Capitol Hill essentially mitigates much of the risk posed to the U.S. economic recovery by the fiscal cliff, it hardly brings resolution to the bitter and often intractable fight in Washington over taxes and spending. The first half of 2013 will feature battles in Congress over raising the debt limit, continuing basic government funding and the expiration of this two-month delay in the sequester. 

Bipartisan outrage after House skips vote on $60 billion Sandy aid bill

Obama nodded to those looming fights in his remarks Tuesday evening, renewing his call for "balance" in any solution in the coming year to address deficits and debts. But the president also sternly warned Congress against using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, as Republicans had in summer of 2011.

"While I'll negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether to pay the bills they have racked up," Obama said.

PhotoBlog: Deal done, Obama heads back to Hawaii with a weary wink

The fiscal cliff itself was the product of discord in Congress resolving those very issues. And the difficulty in attaining even this less ambitious piece of legislation — versus the kind of "grand bargain" Obama had first sought in talks with Republicans — offered a cautionary tale for the 113th Congress, in which the House and the Senate remain controlled by the same parties as during the past two years. 

Squabbling
And even for much of Tuesday, House approval of the fiscal legislation — which was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Vice President Joe Biden — was far from certain. GOP leaders were forced to cajole conservatives who complained the fallback deal contained insufficient spending cuts. Only after it became clear that Republicans wouldn't have the votes to amend the Senate proposal — which the upper chamber said it wouldn't even consider — did House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, bring the bill to the floor. 

The squabbling was familiar to any observers of Congress during the past two years. This divide almost resulted in a government shutdown and a default on the national debt in 2011. It again threatened Tuesday to allow the painful, across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts to play out just as the U.S. economic recovery showed signs of accelerating.

PhotoBlog: See images of Congress working overtime to avoid fiscal cliff

And this deal just approved by Congress in the waning hours of 2013's first day all but ensures that much of the coming year will be dominated by similar battles in Washington. Republicans are hopeful they might be able to extract more spending cuts and entitlement reforms with the government up against other deadlines, like the one needed this spring to authorize more government borrowing. 

That could complicate Obama's already-ambitious second term agenda. The president said just this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will seek comprehensive immigration reform legislation and new laws to address gun violence.

Updated at 2:15 a.m. ET -- An agreement in principle to avert broad tax increases and spending cuts passed in the Senate early Tuesday morning, with an overwhelming vote of 89-8.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote before Wednesday.

The interim New Year's Eve tax deal negotiated by Biden and Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky would raise income taxes on single earners with annual incomes above $400,000 and married couples with incomes above $450,000.

It also blocks spending cuts for two months, extends unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, prevents a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients and prevents a spike in milk prices.

As of mid-afternoon Monday, the sticking point involved the "sequester," the cuts to spending – about $100 billion to start in 2013 -- that were mandated by the Budget Control Act which President Barack Obama signed into law last year. Republicans have signaled they might let the sequester take effect unless it was offset by other spending cuts; the GOP has also said it might accept a delay, but only for a few months.

The Obama administration, however, was pushing for a longer delay in implementing the sequester. Otherwise, the president said, replacing those automatic cuts must be "balanced" — shorthand for a combination of new taxes and other spending cuts.

Obama tried to push talks over the finish line earlier in the afternoon with a statement from the White House.

"Today, it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight," the president said at the White House on Monday. "But it's not done."

In the absence of a broader agreement to resolve the sequester, McConnell appeared in the Senate floor to request a vote only on the tax element of the fiscal cliff.

"Let's pass the tax relief portion now," he said. "Let's take what's been agreed to and keep moving."

But it's not clear that Democrats, who were led in negotiations by Vice President Joe Biden, would agree to de-link the tax debate from other fights over the sequester and extending expiring unemployment benefits past Dec. 31.

House Republicans were careful to note that it was still possible for them to add votes late on New Year's Eve. But they also argued that there was no Senate-passed legislation on which they could schedule a vote, making the prospect of avoiding the cliff all the less likely.

Democratic and Republican sources in the House told NBC News that a final vote on any deal would now most likely wait until afternoon on New Year's Day, or even on Jan. 2.

Though Congress could still conceivably act after New Year's to preserve existing tax rates — thereby limiting any lasting effect on consumers — their inability to reach an agreement until the very last minute could still threaten to rattle the economy and markets.

The House did act late Sunday, though, to clear the way for emergency consideration of Senate legislation if leaders are able to reach an agreement. The House Rules Committee convened with the purpose of dispensing with a rule instilled by Republicans in the early days of 2011 to require that legislation be posted online for a full 72 hours before a vote in the House. GOP leaders had sought that rule to showcase their own transparency, and in reaction to actions by the previous Democratic majority to quickly pass legislation during the health care reform battles of 2010.

Republicans' move to sidestep their own rule underscores the urgency of fiscal cliff talks in the final hours of 2012. There were few ironclad assurances, though, that any Senate agreement would necessarily win the support of the House.

The lurching nature of legislating has been characteristic of the Congress during the last two years, and that's a phenomenon that may well continue into the next Congress, when Democrats will continue to retain control of the Senate, and Republicans will hold a slightly slimmer grasp on the House.