Still time to dodge the cliff, Obama, Boehner say

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — With Con­gress in grid­lock and stocks tak­ing a fall, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama issued a stern sum­mons to law­mak­ers Fri­day to pass leg­is­la­tion to pre­vent year-end fis­cal cliff tax increases on mil­lions and avoid an immi­nent expi­ra­tion of ben­e­fits for the long-term unemployed.

Repub­li­can House Speaker John Boehner said Obama him­self must give more ground to reach an agree­ment. He added, “How we get there, God only knows.”

Con­gress was shut­ting down, and Obama was headed to Hawaii to join his fam­ily for the hol­i­days. But both men indi­cated they’d be back work­ing to beat the fast-approaching Jan. 1 dead­line with an agree­ment between Christ­mas and New Year’s.

One day after House anti-tax rebels tor­pe­doed Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ leg­is­la­tion because it would raise rates on million-dollar-earners, Obama said he still wants a bill that requires the well-to-do to pay more. “Everybody’s got to give a lit­tle bit in a sen­si­ble way” to pre­vent the econ­omy from pitch­ing over a recession-threatening fis­cal cliff, he said.

He spoke after talk­ing by phone with Boehner — archi­tect of the failed House bill — and meet­ing with Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid.

Boehner’s office quickly issued a state­ment say­ing the Ohio Repub­li­can intends to return to the Capi­tol after Christ­mas “ready to find a solu­tion that can pass both houses of Con­gress.” At the same time, spokesman Bren­dan Buck said, “we remain hope­ful he (Obama) is finally ready to get seri­ous about avert­ing the fis­cal cliff.”

At the White House, Obama pro­jected opti­mism as he strug­gled to deal with the wreck­age of weeks of failed nego­ti­a­tions and polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing. “So call me a hope­less opti­mist, but I actu­ally still think we can get it done,” he said of an elu­sive deal.

The pres­i­dent spoke at the end of a day in which stocks tum­bled and con­gres­sional lead­ers squab­bled as the fis­cal cliff drew implaca­bly closer.

Boehner spoke in the morn­ing, describ­ing the increas­ingly tan­gled attempts to beat the Jan. 1 dead­line and head off the per­ilous com­bi­na­tion of across-the-board tax hikes and deep spend­ing cuts.

Obama spoke shortly before a sched­uled depar­ture to join his fam­ily in Hawaii for Christ­mas, but in an indi­ca­tion of the impor­tance of the issue, he told reporters he would be return­ing to the White House next week.

He said that in his nego­ti­a­tions with Boehner, he had offered to meet Repub­li­cans halfway when it came to taxes, and “more than halfway” toward their tar­get for spend­ing cuts.

He said he remains com­mit­ted to work­ing toward a goal of longer-term deficit reduc­tion, but in the mean­time he said quick action is needed to keep taxes from ris­ing for tens of millions.

“Avert­ing this mid­dle class tax hike is not a Demo­c­ra­tic respon­si­bil­ity or a Repub­li­can respon­si­bil­ity. With their votes, the Amer­i­can peo­ple have decided that gov­ern­ment is a shared respon­si­bil­ity,” he said, refer­ring to a Con­gress where power is divided between the two parties.

“We move for­ward together or we don’t move for­ward at all,” he added.

Progress was invis­i­ble one day after House Repub­li­can rebels thwarted Boehner’s plan to pre­vent tax increases for all but the nation’s million-dollar earn­ers. And while nei­ther House is expected to meet again until after Christ­mas, offi­cials in both par­ties said there was still time to pre­vent the changes from kick­ing in with the new year.

Yet they point­edly dis­agreed which side needed to make the first move.

“It’s time for the speaker and all Repub­li­cans to return to the nego­ti­at­ing table,” said Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic leader Reid.

He said that, for now, Boehner should allow a vote on leg­is­la­tion that would block all tax increases except for indi­vid­u­als mak­ing more than $200,000 and cou­ples mak­ing $250,000 — the posi­tion that Obama car­ried through his suc­cess­ful cam­paign for re-election.

Reid said it would pass the House with votes from law­mak­ers from both par­ties, and, sep­a­rately, some Democ­rats said it was pos­si­ble sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion may yet be launched in the Senate.

Moments later, Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Mitch McConnell said Democ­rats had “spent all day yes­ter­day defeat­ing” the leg­is­la­tion in the House — even though Boehner him­self said it had been deep-sixed by GOP opposition.

Coun­ter­ing Reid’s offer, McConnell said the Sen­ate should pass leg­is­la­tion extend­ing tax cuts at all income lev­els and requir­ing a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of the tax code. Beyond that, he said, “”Look: It’s the president’s job to find a solu­tion that can pass Con­gress. He’s the only one who can do it.”

Rhetoric aside, the Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age declined 121 points in what ana­lysts said was a reac­tion to the events in the capital.

The devel­op­ments marked yet another baf­fling turn in a week that began with news that Obama and Boehner had sig­nif­i­cantly nar­rowed their dif­fer­ences on a plan to erase the cliff. Both were offer­ing a cut in taxes for most Amer­i­cans, an increase for a rel­a­tive few and cuts of roughly $1 tril­lion in spend­ing over a year. Also included was a pro­vi­sion to scale back future cost-of-living increases for Social Secu­rity recip­i­ents — a con­ces­sion on the president’s part as much as agree­ing to higher tax rates was for the House speaker.

GOP offi­cials said some senior Repub­li­cans balked at the emerg­ing terms.

Boehner stepped back and announced what he called Plan B, leg­is­la­tion to let tax rates rise on incomes of $1 mil­lion or more while pre­vent­ing increases for all other taxpayers.

Despite state­ments of con­fi­dence, he and his lieu­tenants decided late Thurs­day they were not going to be able to secure the votes needed to pass the mea­sure in the face of oppo­si­tion from con­ser­v­a­tives unwill­ing to vio­late decades-old party ortho­doxy never to raise tax rates.

Offi­cials said as many as two dozen rank-and-file Repub­li­cans had made it clear they would oppose the bill, more than enough to send it to defeat given unan­i­mous Demo­c­ra­tic opposition.

At his Fri­day morn­ing news con­fer­ence sev­eral hours later, Boehner dis­missed sug­ges­tions that he was con­cerned the turn of events could cost him his speakership.

“No, I am not,” he said.

“While we may have not been able to get the votes last night to avert 99.81 per­cent of the tax increases, I don’t think — they weren’t tak­ing that out on me,” Boehner said of the Repub­li­can rank and file. “They were deal­ing with the per­cep­tion that some­body might accuse them of rais­ing taxes.”

Boehner also said that last Mon­day he had told Obama he had sub­mit­ted his bot­tom line proposal.

“The pres­i­dent told me that his num­bers — the $1.3 tril­lion in new rev­enues, $850 bil­lion in spend­ing cuts — was his bot­tom line, that he couldn’t go any further.”

That con­tra­dicted remarks by White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney, who said on Thurs­day that Obama has “never said either in pri­vate or in pub­lic that this was his final offer. He under­stands that to reach a deal it would require some fur­ther nego­ti­a­tion. There is not much fur­ther he could go.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.