Tax Hikes | featured news

As many states continue recovering from the recession, governors say they fear that talks to avert the so-called fiscal cliff will actually lead to deep cuts.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday urged Congress and the Obama administration to strike a budget deal to avert tax increases and spending cuts that could trigger a recession next year.

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.

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.

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.

President Barack Obama isn't talking about it and neither is Mitt Romney. But come January, 163 million workers can expect to feel the pinch of a big tax increase regardless of who wins the election....