Obama, Boehner meet to discuss ‘fiscal cliff’

ANNE FLAHERTY

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met Sun­day at the White House to dis­cuss the ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions over the impend­ing “fis­cal cliff,” the first meet­ing between just the two lead­ers since Elec­tion Day.

Spokes­men for both Obama and Boehner said they agreed to not release details of the con­ver­sa­tion, but empha­sized that the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion remain open.

The meet­ing comes as the White House and Con­gress try to break an impasse over find­ing a way to stop a com­bi­na­tion of auto­matic tax increases and spend­ing cuts sched­uled to kick in at the begin­ning of next year.

Obama met in Novem­ber with Boehner, as well as Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid and House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi. The pres­i­dent spoke by tele­phone with Reid and in per­son with Pelosi on Friday.

Obama has been push­ing higher tax rates on the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans as one way to reduce the deficit — a posi­tion Boehner and other House Repub­li­cans have been stead­fastly against. Repub­li­cans are demand­ing steeper cuts in costly gov­ern­ment enti­tle­ment pro­grams like Medicare and Social Security.

One GOP sen­a­tor said Sun­day that Sen­ate Repub­li­cans would prob­a­bly agree to higher tax rates on the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans if it meant get­ting a chance to over­haul enti­tle­ment programs.

The com­ments by Bob Corker of Ten­nessee — a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive who has been gain­ing stature in the Sen­ate as a prag­matic deal bro­ker — puts new pres­sure on Boehner and other Repub­li­can lead­ers to rethink their long-held asser­tion that even the very rich shouldn’t see their rates go up next year. GOP lead­ers have argued that the rev­enue gained by hik­ing the top two tax rates would be triv­ial to the deficit, and that any tax hike hurts job creation.

But Corker said insist­ing on that red line — espe­cially since Obama won re-election after cam­paign­ing on rais­ing tax rates on the wealthy — might not be wise.

“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,” Corker 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.”

Besides get­ting tax hikes through the Republican-dominated House, Corker’s pro­posal faces another hur­dle: Democ­rats haven’t been recep­tive to GOP pro­pos­als on the enti­tle­ment pro­grams. Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Sun­day was skep­ti­cal about pro­pos­als to increase the eli­gi­bil­ity age for Medicare from 65 to 67. He said he doesn’t see Con­gress address­ing the com­pli­cated issue of Medicare over­haul in the three weeks remain­ing before the end of the year.

“I just don’t think we can do it in a mat­ter of days here before the end of the year,” Durbin said. “We need to address that in a thought­ful way through the com­mit­tee struc­ture after the first of the year.”

And hard-line fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives in the House are hold­ing fast to their position.

“No Repub­li­can wants to vote for a rate tax increase,” said Rep. Jeb Hen­sar­ling, R-Texas, chair­man of the House Repub­li­can Conference.

Added Rep. Mar­sha Black­burn, R-Tenn.: “I’m not sure there is sup­port for the rate hikes. There is sup­port for rev­enue by clean­ing up the code.”

Still, at least one House Repub­li­can has said there is another way. Rep. Tom Cole, of Okla­homa, has said Obama and Boehner should agree not to raise tax rates on the major­ity of Amer­i­cans and nego­ti­ate the rates for top earn­ers later. Cole said Sun­day that most House Repub­li­cans would vote for that approach because it doesn’t include a rate hike.

“You know, it’s not wav­ing a white flag to rec­og­nize polit­i­cal real­ity,” Cole said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., already has said he could sup­port higher tax rates on upper incomes as part of a com­pre­hen­sive plan to cut the fed­eral deficit.

When asked Sun­day what it would take to sign on to a tax rate increase, Coburn echoed Corker’s com­ments by respond­ing, “Sig­nif­i­cant enti­tle­ment reform.” He quickly added, how­ever, that he has esti­mated that such a tax rate increase would only affect about 7 per­cent of the deficit.

“Will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actu­ally solve our prob­lems? Yes,” Coburn said. “But the president’s nego­ti­at­ing with the wrong peo­ple. He needs to be nego­ti­at­ing with our bond­hold­ers in China, because if we don’t put a cred­i­ble plan on the dis­cus­sion, ulti­mately, we all lose.”

Obama’s plan would raise $1.6 tril­lion in rev­enue over 10 years, partly by let­ting decade-old tax cuts on the country’s high­est earn­ers expire at the end of the year. He would con­tinue those Bush-era tax cuts for every­one except indi­vid­u­als earn­ing more than $200,000 and cou­ples mak­ing above $250,000. The high­est rates on top-paid Amer­i­cans would rise from 33 per­cent and 35 per­cent to 36 per­cent and 39.6 percent.

Boehner has offered $800 bil­lion in new rev­enues to be raised by reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing unspec­i­fied tax breaks on upper-income peo­ple. The Repub­li­can plan would cut spend­ing by $1.4 tril­lion, includ­ing by trim­ming annual increases in Social Secu­rity pay­ments and rais­ing the eli­gi­bil­ity age for Medicare.

Hen­sar­ling and Coburn spoke on ABC’s “This Week.” Black­burn and Cole spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Durbin spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.