Politics
Obama, Boehner meet privately to discuss ‘fiscal cliff’
U.S. President Barack Obama (r) shakes hands with Speaker of the House John Boehner (l) during a meeting with bipartisan group of congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on November 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. PHOTO/Getty Images/Olivier Douliery
President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met at the White House to discuss the “fiscal cliff,” while rank-and-file Republicans stepped forward with what they called pragmatic ideas to break the stalemate.
The Obama-Boehner meeting Sunday was the first between just the two leaders since Election Day. They agreed not to release details of their weekend conversation, but aides emphasized that the lines of communication remain open.
Seeking to rally popular support for his position, Obama was heading to Michigan on Monday to speak to auto workers at a plant outside Detroit. It’s the latest in a string of campaign-style appearances Obama has held in recent weeks echoing a theme he stressed repeatedly during his campaign: that the richest Americans should pay more to help reduce the deficit.
At the same time, GOP mavericks are putting increased pressure on their party’s leaders to rethink how they approach negotiations with Obama in the wake of a bruising national election that left Democrats in charge of the White House and Senate.
“There is a growing group of folks looking at this and realizing that we don’t have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue before year end,” Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told “Fox News Sunday.”
If Republicans agree to Obama’s plan to increase rates on the top 2 percent of Americans, Corker added, “the focus then shifts to entitlements, and maybe it puts us in a place where we actually can do something that really saves the nation.”
Conservative stalwart Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had already floated a similar idea, and Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., has said Obama and Boehner could at least agree not to raise tax rates on the majority of Americans and negotiate the rates of top earners later.
