something on a smaller scale anyway to get us past this fiscal cliff to make sure the average or typical american family of four s taxes don t go up by $2200 next week when you throw all of it together. we are tolded to that there have been telephone calls, e-mails back and forth at the staff level throughout the course of the evening and into this morning perhaps later today we will have a face-to-face meeting but with staff, not with the principals involved. not with the the senators involved. we don t expect to see them in the capitoled today at all. can they agree on a level here. and if mitch mcconnell the republican leader can bring along enough republicans to have it pass the senate and then really put the onus on john boehner. and that s one of the ifs and bus about this. of course we re talk about mud night new year s eve, monday into tuesday for the deadline here. the world is not going to come to an end, t.j., if they go into tuesday and have to do it then. but certainly the
making sure taxes don t go up. we can move on to the other issues. you pointed out earlier both the debt ceiling and the sequester and the cr. there will be big spending fights in front of us. let s take the american people out of the line of fire. move on and have the debates and discussions. we have to be on a lot firmer footing when we talk about those things. lastly there is speculation that the reason why speaker boehner is not moving more quickly to make a deal is he doesn t want to have fingerprints on something that would raise taxes ahead of his election for speaker on january 3rd. do you think there is any worry that he may not be elected speaker on the first ballot come that election at the beginning of the year? there is no worry. he had the complete support of everybody for plan b and has the support for speakership for most
reduction deal in place, make sure middle-class taxes don t go up, make sure that we re laying the foundations for growth, give certainty to businesses, large and small, not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months, allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform and all the things that will really make the determination as to whether our country grows over the next four years, ten years, 40 years. and if you just pull back from the immediate, you know, political battles, if you kind of peel off the partisan war paint, then we should be able to get something done.
independents, they agreed with a balanced approach to deficit reduction and making sure middle-class taxes don t go up. folks agreed to that. now the good news is we re starting to see a few republicans coming around to it too. i m talking about republicans in congress. so the reason i m here is because i want the american people to urge congress soon, in the next week, the next two weeks, to begin the work we have by doing what we all agree on both parties agree that we should extend the middle-class tax cuts. we have disagreements about the high end tax cuts, republicans don t want to raise taxes on folks like me, i think i can pay a little more to make sure kids can go to college and we can build roads and invest in nih to find cures for alzheimer s and
policies that were going to be good for the economy at that point. unemployment insurance extensions, payroll tax extension, all of which made a difference and is part of the reason why what we ve seen is 32 consecutive months of job growth and 35 million jobs created and the unemployment rate coming down. what i said at the time is what i meant, which is this was a one-time proposition and, you know, what i have told leaders privately as well as publicly, is that we cannot afford to extend the bush tax cuts fors the wealthy. what we can do is make sure that middle-class taxes don t go up. and so the most important step we can take right now, i think the foundation for a deal that helps the economy, creates jobs,