Spending Cuts | featured news

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.

Fifty-three percent of Americans said Republicans in Congress would be more to blame if the government could not reach an agreement to avoid the combination of spending cuts and tax hikes set to take effect at the beginning of the year.

The budget deficit rose in October, the first month of fiscal year 2013, as looming negotiations over expiring tax cuts and imminent spending reductions dominated the post-election political landscape.

Amid a global fright over Washington's political brinkmanship, U.S. lawmakers return to the capital on Tuesday with a seven-week deadline to reach agreement on scheduled tax hikes and budget cuts that threaten to trigger another recession.

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 deployed Big Bird in a new campaign ad Tuesday mocking Mitt Romney's vow to end federal funding for public broadcasting. Romney's campaign dismissed it as an example of Obama being small-minded while the foundation behind Big Bird's program, "Sesame Street," asked that the ad be taken down.

Low interest rates let governments keep their borrowing costs low, helping them live within their budgets without having to raise taxes or cut spending.

When lawmakers return to Washington on Monday, they face big issues, including taxes, spending cuts and the prospect of a debilitating "fiscal cliff" in January. Yet Congress is expected to do what it often does best: punt problems to the future....

This dispute is typical of election-year spin. Romney and Ryan want it both ways: credit for cutting spending without detailing what programs would suffer. That allows Obama to fill in the blanks and scare voters by warning that their favorite federally funded program will be decimated.