Pete Souza/The White House, via NBC
President Obama spoke with David Gregory of NBC's "Meet The Press" in the Blue Room of the White House during an interview taped on Saturday.
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Sunday implored Congress to act in the next 48 hours to avert the sharp tax increases and benefit cuts scheduled to take effect beginning on Tuesday, but there were no indications that negotiations on Capitol Hill were making progress.
In an appearance on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” Mr. Obama accused Republicans of blocking action on measures to prevent taxes from rising for most Americans, threatening the still-fragile economic recovery.
“We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over,” Mr. Obama said in the interview, which was taped on Saturday. “They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers. Yesterday I had another meeting with the leadership, and I suggested to them if they can’t do a comprehensive package of smart deficit reductions, let’s at minimum make sure that people’s taxes don’t go up and that two million people don’t lose their unemployment insurance.”
“And I was modestly optimistic yesterday, but we don’t yet see an agreement,” Mr. Obama said. “And now the pressure’s on Congress to produce.”
Unless Congress acts by midnight Monday, a broad set of tax increases and federal spending cuts will be automatically imposed on Jan. 1, affecting virtually every taxpayer and government program. The spending cuts were put in place earlier this year as draconian incentives that would force the president and lawmakers to confront the nation’s growing debt. Now, lawmakers are trying to keep them from happening, though it seemed likely that the cuts, known as sequestration, would be left for the next Congress, to be sworn in this week.
Talks were not going well, according to two officials with knowledge of the negotiations. Republicans were pushing for the largest deficit reduction deal they could get in the time remaining, the two officials said. They have told Democrats that they are willing to put off scheduled cuts to health care providers treating Medicare patients but that they want to pay for it with spending cuts elsewhere.
They also want to include Mr. Obama’s offer to change the way inflation is calculated to slow the growth of benefit programs like Social Security and to raise more revenue.
Democrats have balked at both, the officials said, fearing that any such concessions would only increase demands for addition concessions in the coming weeks when talks resume on a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit.
Both sides worry that the confrontational tone that the president took on “Meet the Press” was not helpful.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senator minority leader, issued a statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s remarks. “While the president was taping those discordant remarks yesterday,” Mr. Stewart said, “Senator McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution. Discussions continue today.”
House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, in his comments, pointed to the president as the problem. Republicans have tried to reach an agreement, Mr. Boehner said, but “the president has continued to insist on a package skewed dramatically in favor of higher taxes that would destroy jobs.”
Republicans have blamed Mr. Obama for seeking to punish the wealthy with large tax increases and have accused him of not negotiating in good faith. They say his approach would worsen the deficit by protecting Democratic constituency groups from tax increases and benefit reductions while imposing sharp penalties on farmers and small business owners.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a member of the Republican leadership, said Sunday on the CNN program “State of the Union” that Mr. Obama was not dealing with the real issue imperiling the economy — the Democrats’ “addiction to spending.”
The president and party leaders in the House and Senate have been seeking a compromise measure that would protect middle-income families from the worst of the tax increases, but there has been no agreement on where to draw the line. With the Bush-era tax cuts expiring, Mr. Obama and Democrats have said they want tax rates to rise on incomes over $250,000 a year; Republicans want a higher threshold, at perhaps $400,000.
As part of the last-minute negotiations, the lawmakers have haggled over unemployment benefits, cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, taxes on large inheritances and limits on the impact of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that is intended to ensure that the rich pay a fair share but that is increasingly encroaching on the middle class.
Mr. Obama has said that if talks between the Senate leaders break down, he wants the Senate to schedule an up-or-down vote on a narrower measure that would extend only the middle-class tax breaks and unemployment benefits. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would schedule such a vote on Monday absent a deal.
In his comments, Mr. Obama singled out the top Republican leaders — Senator McConnell and Speaker Boehner — for threatening to derail any deal in order to protect the wealthiest Americans.
Obama Accuses Republicans of Blocking Tax Deal
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Obama Accuses Republicans of Blocking Tax Deal
