Obama pleads with gop to accept more tax revenue
20 Feb 2013 5:40 AM IST
President Barack Obama on Tuesday was to urge congressional Republicans to accept more tax revenue in order to avert looming, across-the-board budget cuts due to take effect in less than two weeks.
The USD 85 billion in cuts, a severe attempt at addressing the country's massive deficit, will start taking effect on March 1 unless Congress acts. The White House says the cuts could derail an economy still suffering from high unemployment and sluggish growth.
The cuts are just one of a handful of fiscal deadlines facing a sharply divided Congress, which is on break this week. In recent days, military leaders and heads of the State Department and other departments have appeared before Congress with warnings of what the cuts would do to their work.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal on Tuesday by co-chairs of an influential deficit-reduction commission called for reducing the deficit by USD 2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with much of the savings coming through health care reform, closing tax loopholes, a stingier adjustment of the Social Security pension system's cost of living increases and other measures. The March 1 spending cuts were as first set to begin taking effect on January 1, but the White House and lawmakers agreed to push it off for two months in order to create space to work on a larger budget deal.
With little progress in recent weeks, Obama is calling for the cuts to be put off again, though it's unclear whether another delay would have any impact on a broader budget agreement.
The USD 85 billion in cuts, a severe attempt at addressing the country's massive deficit, will start taking effect on March 1 unless Congress acts. The White House says the cuts could derail an economy still suffering from high unemployment and sluggish growth.
The cuts are just one of a handful of fiscal deadlines facing a sharply divided Congress, which is on break this week. In recent days, military leaders and heads of the State Department and other departments have appeared before Congress with warnings of what the cuts would do to their work.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal on Tuesday by co-chairs of an influential deficit-reduction commission called for reducing the deficit by USD 2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with much of the savings coming through health care reform, closing tax loopholes, a stingier adjustment of the Social Security pension system's cost of living increases and other measures. The March 1 spending cuts were as first set to begin taking effect on January 1, but the White House and lawmakers agreed to push it off for two months in order to create space to work on a larger budget deal.
With little progress in recent weeks, Obama is calling for the cuts to be put off again, though it's unclear whether another delay would have any impact on a broader budget agreement.
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