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Re-energized Obama and GOP size each other on budget deal
Re-elected U.S.President Barack Obama with Speaker John Boehner. PHOTO/AP
Taking little time to celebrate, President Barack Obama is setting out to leverage his re-election into legislative success in an upcoming showdown with congressional Republicans over taxes, deficits and the impending “fiscal cliff.” House Speaker John Boehner says Republicans are willing to consider some form of higher tax revenue as part of the solution — but only “under the right conditions.”
All sides are setting out opening arguments for the negotiations to come.
Even before returning to Washington from his hometown of Chicago, Obama was on the phone Wednesday with the four top leaders of the House and Senate — Boehner included — to talk about the lame-duck Congress that convenes just one week after Election Day.
Without a budget deal to head off the fiscal showdown, the nation faces a combination of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and steep across-the-board spending cuts that could total US$800 billion next year. Economists have warned that could tip the nation back into recession.
Vice President Joe Biden, flying to his home in Delaware from Chicago, told reporters aboard Air Force Two that the White House was “really anxious” to get moving on the problem. He said he’d been making a lot of calls and “people know we’ve got to get down to work and I think they’re ready to move.” He didn’t identify whom he’d been speaking with but predicted the “fever will break” on past legislative gridlock after some soul-searching by Republicans.
The White House held out this week’s election results as a mandate from voters for greater cooperation between the White House and Congress. At the same time, it reiterated Obama’s top priorities: cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, creating jobs and cutting the deficit “in a balanced way” — through a combination of tax increases on wealthier Americans and spending cuts.
Obama told the congressional leaders he believed “the American people sent a message in yesterday’s election that leaders in both parties need to put aside their partisan interests and work with common purpose to put the interests of the American people and the American economy first,” the White House said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., channeled Obama in calling for a quick solution to the fiscal showdown and saying that asking “the richest of the rich” to pay more should be part of the equation. He added that he’d “do everything within my power to be as conciliatory as possible” but added, “I want everyone to also understand you can’t push us around.”
