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| House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio gestures as he speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 7, 2012, to discuss the pending fiscal cliff. Boehner said there's been no progress in negotiations on how to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts and called on President Barack Obama to come up with a new offer. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met Sunday
at the White House to discuss the ongoing negotiations over the
impending "fiscal cliff," the first meeting between just the two leaders
since Election Day.
Spokesmen for both Obama
and Boehner said they agreed to not release details of the conversation,
but emphasized that the lines of communication remain open.
The
meeting comes as the White House and Congress try to break an impasse
over finding a way to stop a combination of automatic tax increases and
spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the beginning of next year.
Obama
met in November with Boehner, as well as Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The president spoke by
telephone with Reid and in person with Pelosi on Friday.
Obama
has been pushing higher tax rates on the wealthiest Americans as one
way to reduce the deficit - a position Boehner and other House
Republicans have been steadfastly against. Republicans are demanding
steeper cuts in costly government entitlement programs like Medicare and
Social Security.
One GOP senator said Sunday
that Senate Republicans would probably agree to higher tax rates on the
wealthiest Americans if it meant getting a chance to overhaul
entitlement programs.
The comments by Bob
Corker of Tennessee - a fiscal conservative who has been gaining stature
in the Senate as a pragmatic deal broker - puts new pressure on Boehner
and other Republican leaders to rethink their long-held assertion that
even the very rich shouldn't see their rates go up next year. GOP
leaders have argued that the revenue gained by hiking the top two tax
rates would be trivial to the deficit, and that any tax hike hurts job
creation.
But Corker said insisting on that
red line - especially since Obama won re-election after campaigning on
raising tax rates on the wealthy - might not be wise.
"There
is a growing group of folks looking at this and realizing that we don't
have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue before year end,"
Corker told "Fox News Sunday."
If Republicans
agree to Obama's plan to increase rates on the top 2 percent of
Americans, Corker added, "the focus then shifts to entitlements and
maybe it puts us in a place where we actually can do something that
really saves the nation."
Besides getting tax
hikes through the Republican-dominated House, Corker's proposal faces
another hurdle: Democrats haven't been receptive to GOP proposals on the
entitlement programs. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on
Sunday was skeptical about proposals to increase the eligibility age for
Medicare from 65 to 67. He said he doesn't see Congress addressing the
complicated issue of Medicare overhaul in the three weeks remaining
before the end of the year.
"I just don't
think we can do it in a matter of days here before the end of the year,"
Durbin said. "We need to address that in a thoughtful way through the
committee structure after the first of the year."
And hard-line fiscal conservatives in the House are holding fast to their position.
"No
Republican wants to vote for a rate tax increase," said Rep. Jeb
Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Added
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.: "I'm not sure there is support for the
rate hikes. There is support for revenue by cleaning up the code."
Still,
at least one House Republican has said there is another way. Rep. Tom
Cole, of Oklahoma, has said Obama and Boehner should agree not to raise
tax rates on the majority of Americans and negotiate the rates for top
earners later. Cole said Sunday that most House Republicans would vote
for that approach because it doesn't include a rate hike.
"You know, it's not waving a white flag to recognize political reality," Cole said.
Sen.
Tom Coburn, R-Okla., already has said he could support higher tax rates
on upper incomes as part of a comprehensive plan to cut the federal
deficit.
When asked Sunday what it would take
to sign on to a tax rate increase, Coburn echoed Corker's comments by
responding, "Significant entitlement reform." He quickly added, however,
that he has estimated that such a tax rate increase would only affect
about 7 percent of the deficit.
"Will I accept
a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems?
Yes," Coburn said. "But the president's negotiating with the wrong
people. He needs to be negotiating with our bondholders in China,
because if we don't put a credible plan on the discussion, ultimately,
we all lose."
Obama's plan would raise $1.6
trillion in revenue over 10 years, partly by letting decade-old tax cuts
on the country's highest earners expire at the end of the year. He
would continue those Bush-era tax cuts for everyone except individuals
earning more than $200,000 and couples making above $250,000. The
highest rates on top-paid Americans would rise from 33 percent and 35
percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent.
Boehner
has offered $800 billion in new revenues to be raised by reducing or
eliminating unspecified tax breaks on upper-income people. The
Republican plan would cut spending by $1.4 trillion, including by
trimming annual increases in Social Security payments and raising the
eligibility age for Medicare.
Hensarling and
Coburn spoke on ABC's "This Week." Blackburn and Cole spoke on CNN's
"State of the Union." Durbin spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."
