Barack Obama, Spending Cuts | featured news

The nation’s capital was enveloped in a familiar kind of gridlock late Monday, as Republicans again demanded that President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats act first to put off $85 billion in automatic cuts slated to take effect on Friday.

So it's looking more and more like Republicans will propose an alternative to the sequester: It would kick in, but Obama administration agency heads would have control to reallocate where the cuts hit at their discretion, so they're not imposed in a slap-dash across-the-board fashion. Among those suggesting this idea: National Review and Karl Rove.

House Speaker John Boehner and a top aide to President Obama are duking it out in competing columns over who is to blame for the sequester. "It is a product of the president's own failed leadership," wrote Boehner in The Wall Street Journal, nine days before the sequester -- $85 billion in automatic budget cuts -- kick in.

President Obama, back from his three-day golf getaway, on Monday made use of his bully pulpit, while Congress remains out all week, to turn up the pressure for a bipartisan agreement to avoid indiscriminate across-the-board budget cuts that will otherwise hit March 1.

President Barack Obama told fellow Democrats from the House of Representatives on Thursday he is willing to agree to a "big deal" with Congress on spending cuts and tax reforms to end the fiscal uncertainty over the U.S. deficit.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will propose that Congress pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms to put off the "harmful consequences" of huge automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" for a few months, a White House official said.

Legislation to block the "fiscal cliff" is headed to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. The bill will avoid, for now, the major tax increases and government spending cuts that had been scheduled to take effect with the new year.

Financial markets would be affected adversely if U.S. lawmakers fail to agree on a "fiscal cliff" deal before Tuesday, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday, while urging Congress to act quickly to extend tax cuts for middle-class Americans.

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."

U.S. President Barack Obama and John Boehner, the top Republican in Washington, met at the White House on Monday to try to reach a budget deal that would head off steep tax hikes and spending cuts that could push the economy into recession next year.