Barack Obama, Tax Hikes | featured news

President Obama is ready for difficult concessions to reach a deficit deal, but GOP lawmakers must first commit to higher tax rates on the rich and specify what additional spending cuts they want in a deal to avoid the looming "fiscal cliff," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he believes that members of both parties can reach a "framework" on a debt-cutting deal before Christmas, making his case with a mix of optimism and pressure on congressional Republicans to keep tax rates from rising on the middle class.

President Barack Obama plans to make a public case this week for his strategy for dealing with the looming fiscal cliff, traveling to the Philadelphia suburbs Friday as he pressures Republicans to allow tax increases on the wealthy while extending tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or less....

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.

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....