Comment on Last-minute fiscal cliff talks in Senate

Last-minute fiscal cliff talks in Senate

Mitch McConnell

Last-minute fiscal cliff talks in Senate Associated Press Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 11:02 am, Saturday, December 29, 2012 WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate leaders groped for a last-minute compromise Saturday to avoid middle-class tax increases and possibly prevent deep spending cuts at the dawn of the new year as President Barack Obama warned that failure could mean a "self-inflicted wound to the economy." In a blunt challenge to Republicans, Obama said that barring a bipartisan agreement, he expected both houses to vote on his own proposal to block tax increases on all but the wealthy and simultaneously preserve expiring unemployment benefits. Any compromise legislation is certain to include higher tax rates on the wealthy, and the House GOP rank and file rejected the idea when Boehner presented it as part of a final attempt to strike a more sweeping agreement with Obama. [...] negotiators had a more cramped goal of preventing additional damage to the economy in the form of higher taxes across the board — with some families facing increases measured in the thousands of dollars — as well as cuts aimed at the Pentagon and hundreds of domestic programs. "Small businesses and farm families don't know how to deal with the unfair death tax_a tax that the president and congressional leaders have threatened to expand to include even more family farms and even more small businesses," he said. Obama and congressional Democrats are insisting on an extension of long-term unemployment benefits that are expiring for about 2 million jobless individuals.

 

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