Spending Cuts, Federal Debt | featured news

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.

Americans blame the failure of the debt "super committee" on everyone involved, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday, despite the best efforts of Democrats and Republicans to point fingers at each other.

With the clocks ticking down to deadline, it is becoming increasingly apparent on Capitol Hill that the supercommittee will not be able to reach its goal of cutting $1.2 trillion from the national debt.

Rival Democratic and Republican plans to raise the government's borrowing ability have thrust Congress into a standoff just one week away from a potentially devastating debt crisis.

The Federal Aviation Administration was forced into a partial shutdown Monday after Congress failed to temporarily extend its funding. The agency was ordered to furlough thousands of employees and freeze $2.5 billion in airport construction money.

Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director both predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand.

President Obama continued to push for a $4-trillion deal to rein in government deficits Sunday, but a White House meeting with congressional leaders failed to break the deadlock over spending and taxes that has stalemated discussions for more than a month.

Republicans would accept a “mini” deal with the Obama administration on raising the debt limit, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican leader, said. Cornyn said today on “Fox News Sunday” that while Republicans would prefer a long-term settlement, they would accept a shorter-term agreement if that’s all they could get done. The U.S. Treasury Department has projected that on Aug. 2 the U.S. will no longer be able to meet obligations if the legal debt ceiling isn’t raised.

President Barack Obama pressed his case on Saturday for achieving deficit reduction, in part by ending tax breaks and singling out hedge fund managers, oil companies and billionaires to take the hit.

Regardless of any tax concessions President Obama achieves, the end result would favor Republican goals of cutting spending and government services. Even as the political battle mounts over federal spending, the end result for federal policy is already visible — and clearly favors Republican goals of deep spending cuts and drastically fewer government services.