Barack Obama, Spending Cuts | featured news

President Barack Obama's re-election has stiffened Democrats' spine against cutting popular benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Their new resolve could become as big a hurdle to a deal that would skirt crippling tax increases and spending cuts in January as Republicans' resistance to raising tax rates on the wealthy.

The outline of a compromise over upcoming federal tax hikes and spending cuts began to come into focus Friday after President Obama convened congressional leaders at the White House.

Congressional leaders of both parties will meet with the president in an effort to reach a deal to avoid across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that could push the economy into recession.

...In his first full-scale news conference since March, Obama said he was willing to compromise with Republicans to forge a deal on the nation's debt and taxes to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a combination of budget cuts and tax increases that will kick in next year if such an agreement is not reached.

President Barack Obama is lobbying business and labor groups to support his plan to avoid an impending fiscal cliff, telling the two sides he remains committed to requiring the wealthy to pay more in taxes.

Flush with re-election vigor, President Barack Obama on Friday will provide his first public comments on the upcoming negotiations with Congress on how to deal with pending tax hikes and spending cuts that create the so-called fiscal cliff facing the economy at the end of the year.

Washington is growing increasingly jittery about the prospect of automatic spending cuts decimating federal agency budgets in January. So when President Obama declared in Monday’s debate that the cuts “will not happen,” people took note. Read full article >>

President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Saturday of a backward approach to education funding that would mean further teacher layoffs, in a veiled swipe at Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, who has led a drive for domestic-spending cuts.

President Obama urged Congress to renew aid to states and local governments so that they can avoid layoffs of teachers.

An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that President Barack Obama's proposal to make millionaires pay a significant share of their incomes in taxes is widely popular. But the plan is not shaking the public's embrace of spending cuts as the best way to balance the budget....