The four leaders – two Republicans, John A. Boehner, the House speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader; and two Democrats, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader – politely took turns at a microphone outside the West Wing, addressing each other by first names and describing the 70-minute session as constructive.
“We feel very comfortable with each other, and this isn’t something we’re going to wait until the last day of December to get it done,” Mr. Reid said.
“This isn’t the first time that we’ve dealt with these issues,” he said. “We feel we understand what the problem is. And we felt very – I feel very good about what we were able to talk about in there. We have the cornerstones of being able to work something out. We’re both going to have to give up some of the things that we know are a problem.”
Mr. Boehner said he outlined a framework for overhauling the tax code and spending programs that is “consistent with the president’s call for a fair and balanced approach.”
“To show our seriousness,” he added, “we put revenue on the table as long as it’s accompanied by significant spending cuts.”
His Senate counterpart, Mr. McConnell, made plain that Republicans were talking about spending for the entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare and Medicaid, which are growing fast as the population ages and, along with military spending, are squeezing everything else in the federal budget. Republican senators, Mr. McConnell said, “fully understand that you can’t save the country until you have entitlement programs that fit the demographics of the changing America in the coming years.”
“We’re prepared to put revenues on the table,” he added, “provided we fix the real problem, even though most of my members, I think without exception, believe that we’re in the dilemma we’re in not because we tax too little but because we spend too much.”
Ms. Pelosi, whose House Democratic colleagues include many liberals who resist significant changes to entitlement spending, said: “We understand our responsibility here. We understand that it has to be about cuts, it has to be about revenue, it has to be about growth, it has to be about the future.” She added, “I feel confident that a solution may be in sight.”
With Mr. Obama in the Roosevelt Room, the leaders made up the same cast who bitterly fought in 2011, then eventually agreed to nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years but deadlocked on the roughly $4 trillion “grand bargain” both sides say the country needs.
Mr. Obama demands that it include up to $1.6 trillion in tax increases for the wealthy, while Republicans favor less in revenue but big cost-saving changes to Medicare and Medicaid.
The talks began on a friendly note, as well: With reporters and cameras briefly allowed into the room, the president wished a happy birthday to Mr. Boehner, who turns 63 on Saturday.
The two sides met after a tense week of postelection, pre-bargaining positioning. Mr. Obama, after making an issue of it in his re-election campaign, claims a mandate to insist on extending the Bush-era tax cuts, which otherwise expire on Dec. 31 — but not for income of $250,000 and above for couples and $200,000 for individuals.
More broadly, the outcome of the budget talks will go a long way toward defining his leverage for a second term, both in terms of his influence and the resources available to him to press his agenda.
The president “will not sign, under any circumstances, an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent of American earners,” his spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters on Thursday.
“We have to make sure that taxes don’t go up on the middle class, that the economy remains strong,” Mr. Obama said as the meeting began.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/us/politics/obama-meeting-top-lawmakers-in-tough-deficit-talks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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