Excerpt
President Obama is scheduled to step in front of reporters on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. for his first full-scale press conference since March with an agenda of convincing the nation that his fiscal plans for the coming year are the best path.
With a decisive victory more than a week in the rearview mirror, and a shuffling of his Cabinet, White House staff and top administration officials ahead, Mr. Obama is spending this week laying the groundwork for what could be a bitter battle with a divided Congress.
Leaders from both parties are saying they aren't sure how the negotiations will go once they formally begin, and each side is expressing hope for compromise before automatic budget cuts kick in early next year.
The president plans on "making no opening concessions and calling for far more in new taxes than Republicans have so far been willing to consider," and will propose the $1.6 trillion in tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy from his most recent budget blueprint, Zachary Goldfarb and Lori Montgomery reported for the Washington Post. Among the details of what they deem the president's "hard line" at the starting gate:
Obama's 2013 budget sought to reduce borrowing over the next 10 years by about $4 trillion, counting $1.1 trillion in agency cuts already in force. In addition to raising taxes, Obama proposed to slice $340 billion from health-care programs and to count about $1 trillion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His budget request did not include reductions to health and retirement benefits, but Obama did consider such changes in his 2011 talks with Boehner, including raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 and applying a stingier measure of inflation to Social Security.
Also framing the discussions, Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman writes that "with corporate executives among those expressing concern that the $607 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff risks tipping the economy into another recession, the administration has been working to enlist their support before negotiations with Congress begin."
Among the officials meeting with top business and finance leaders: Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Jeff Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as Chief of Staff Jack Lew and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, Goldman reports.
The press conference comes eight days after the president's win over Republican nominee Mitt Romney, so it's not clear how many political questions Mr. Obama will face or how he'll outline his views of the results.
ON THE CLIFF'S EDGE
Judy Woodruff examined the lame duck session on Tuesday's Newshour, with Todd Zwillich of PRI's "The Takeaway" walking through the multiple fiscal cliff scenarios.
Watch the discussion below.
And Jeffrey Brown talked with two of the leaders who attended a meeting at the White House Tuesday, National Education Association's Dennis Van Roekel and Moveon's Justin Ruben.
Ruben said the president made clear "he's going to stick to his guns" on higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and Van Roekel said the conversation was broad. He said Mr. Obama wasn't talking with them about how he'd negotiate a deal, since the battle is just beginning.
Watch that conversation below.
The NewsHour's Kwame Holman was at the White House on Tuesday. He reports:
Leaders of labor and liberal organizations were all smiles as they trickled out of a White House meeting with the president. One called the off-the-record session a "celebration" of Mr. Obama's re-election their foot soldiers helped ensure and a chance to congratulate him on four more years.
It also was a chance, several said, both to urge him to hold harmless the middle class and poor in upcoming "fiscal cliff" budget negotiations with Congress and to assure the president they'll be pushing that message from outside the White House gates.
"We're committed to keeping the campaign going," Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change told a gaggle of reporters in the White House driveway.
He said the groups and Mr. Obama "are on the same page [to] make sure [the budget] isn't balanced on the backs of middle income and poor" people.
Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO said the president told the dozen leaders he is committed to maintaining the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class set to expire Dec. 31 while "making sure the wealthy pay their fair share."
A few minutes later and a few steps away in the White House Briefing Room, Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterated that Mr. Obama "will not sign any bill that" extends the tax cuts for the top two percent of tax filers.
Carney also acknowledged no such bill is likely ever to reach the White House since Democrats in the Senate have the votes prevent it.
On Wednesday after the press conference, the president continues the "outside game" strategy he promised to employ more often in a second term when he tries to line up major business leaders' support for his approach to the fiscal cliff negotiations and overall tax, spending, and deficit reduction initiatives.
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