Politics
Obama calling for ‘tough compromises’ in fiscal cliff talks
“There is no more, ‘let’s do it some other time,'” he said. “This isn’t something we’re going to wait until the last day of December to get it done.”
The group, which also included Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the minority Democrats in the House, was under pressure from the public and the markets to strike a deal that averts the immediate threat of a year-end crunch.
The cliff involves a series of steep across-the-board budget cuts and effective tax increases from expiring temporary cuts slated to hit on January 1 that could suck more than US$500 billion out of the economy.
Both sides generally support extending the tax cuts, though Obama strongly insisted on Wednesday that he wanted taxes to go up for the richest two percent of Americans, which Boehner has rejected.
But there was no mention of that issue as the two sides entered the White House for the initial meeting.
Obama only stressed the need to protect middle class Americans.
“We have to make sure that taxes don’t go up on middle class families and that our economy remains strong and creating jobs, and that’s an agenda that Democrats and Republicans and Independents, people all across the country share,” he said.
