SALON

Saturday, Nov 10, 2012 2:00 PM UTC

Obama throws down gauntlet on fiscal cliff

The president defiantly defended his plan to extend middle class tax cuts. Then he held up his pen

By

Topics: Barack Obama, White House, AlterNet, Fiscal cliff, budget deficit,

Obama throws down gauntlet on fiscal cliff (Credit: WhiteHouse.gov)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet The election results are in: President Barack Obama has political capital, and he intends to spend it. That was the essence of the president’s message, delivered Friday afternoon during brief remarks made the East Room of the White House.

“In fact, the Senate has already passed a bill that will do just this,” Obama said. “What we need is action from the House. And I’ve got the pen — ready to sign the bill right away.” He reached into his pocket, and drew a handsome black pen that he held up for the cameras. “I’m ready to do it,” he said.

While House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has made conciliatory noises concerning the need to raise revenue, he also said, in an interview on Thursday with ABC News, that any tax increase on anybody — including the wealthiest two percent of Americans — is “unacceptable.”

The showdown is part of a debate over how to solve the problem of the so-called “fiscal cliff” — a rack of spending cuts and tax increases that will take place across the board, automatically, if Congress doesn’t act to forestall them. It’s a deal that the president agreed to in order to get the Congress to raise the debt ceiling in 2010 so that the United States wouldn’t default on its debt, which would have had dire consequences for both the U.S. and the global economy.

Now, with the chickens about ready to come home to roost, the president is trying to turn the tables on Congress, saying, hey, you guys hate any kind of tax increases, right? Why not act on the piece of this thing we all agree on.

“While there may be disagreements in Congress over whether to raise taxes on people making *over* $250,000 a year, nobody — not Republicans, not Democrats — want taxes to go up for folks making under $250,000 a year,” Obama said. “So let’s not wait.”

Among Congress-watchers, no one will be found holding their breath waiting for the House to leap to take the president’s offer. But it’s smart politics on Obama’s part — a move that casts him as the reasonable one.

Republicans often justify their intransigence on raising taxes for the rich by saying that small business owners fall into the brackets the Democrats have targeted. So Obama was quick to address that ruse in his own remarks.

Speaking of his proposal to extend middle-class tax cuts, Obama said: “That one step…would give millions of American families — 98 percent of Americans, and 97 percent of small businesses — the certainty that they need going into the new year. It would immediately take a chunk of the economic uncertainty off the table, and that will lead to new jobs and faster growth.”

The president also seemed to be aware of the nervousness of his base, many of whose members fear that Obama will agree to a reduction in Social Security benefits in order to appease the Republicans and avoid the sequester.

“I’m open to compromise; I’m open to new ideas,” Obama said. “I’m committed to solving our fiscal challenge. But I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced. I’m not gonna ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes. I’m not going to do that.”

The president has invited congressional leaders to the White House next week to lay out ideas for solving the looming crisis. They will be joined, Obama said, by leaders in business and labor.

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington correspondent. More Adele M. Stan.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 26 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
136 points137 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
122 points123 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
106 points107 points | 83 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
99 points100 points | 24 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
74 points75 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations