The fiscal challenges ahead.

President tears up addressing team at campaign headquarters, while advisers discuss how to maintain 'ground game'

January is two month's away and so are looming economic problems .With the Fiscal cliff just a breath away from all of us . President Obama asked key congressional leaders to visit the White House early next week in a bid to stave off the looming fiscal cliff. “I’m open to compromise. I’m open to new ideas. I’m committed to solving our fiscal challenges, but I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced,” he said in remarks from the White House—his first public utterance since his wee-hours victory speech. Yet Obama shed a few tears while addressing his team earlier at his campaign head quarters . Perhaps President  Obama has a sense of worry . At this point President Obama is ready to face off with House Speaker John Boehner next week "so we can start to build consensus around the challenges that we can only solve together."The president was referring to $64 billion in automatic spending cuts that will take effect in January if a deal cannot be reached. Those cuts are mandated by the Budget Control Act that Obama signed into law last year. Budget analysts call the combination of automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to occur at year end the fiscal cliff.As part of an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, Obama and congressional leaders must also agree how much taxes ought to go up and which taxpayers will be hit by tax hikes. According to the Congressional Budget Office taxes will increase by more than $400 billion in 2013 under current law.Adding to the pressure to design a deal that would avoid the fiscal cliff, the CBO on Thursday repeated its previous warnings that the spending cuts, combined with scheduled tax increases, would probably cause a recession next year.Specifically the CBO said in its Thursday report that the tax increases and spending cuts would cause the unemployment rate to rise to 9.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to a jobless rate of 7.9 percent in October.  The tax increases would raise the average tax burden by almost $3,500 per taxpayer in 2013, according to According to the Tax Policy Center. This would happen because the current income tax rates and some tax breaks are scheduled to expire or shrink on Dec. 31. Among them, the popular middle-class tax break, a $1,000-per-child tax credit for each child age 17 and younger, would be cut in half. In addition, starting on Jan. 1, the Affordable Care Act imposes a $20 billion tax increase on people with incomes above $200,000, or $250,000 for joint filers.  Adding to the tax increase, a temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax is set to expire at year end.The president has argued for raising taxes on Americans with incomes over $200,000 and over $250,000 for married couples who file jointly.But the exact mix of tax increases and who must pay them will be the subject of intense negotiations between the president and congressional leaders over the next few weeks.

NOTES & COMMENTS:

Maybe now that Obama has won, he can reveal his secret plan for dealing with his 6 trillion dollar debt.So far, all I've heard from Obama is the reapeal of the Bush tax cuts for the top 3%, which comes to about 80 billion dollars (generously, and assumes billionairs won't move their money to avoid paying higher taxes).Where does the other 1.17 trillion dollars in anual shortfall come from? Where are Obama's 1.17 Trillion dollar cuts?Dems are too stupid to subtract 80 billion from 1.25 Trillion, and so they think the tax cuts on the rich solves the whole problem. Just like they think shorting Medicare by 760 Billion dollars will save 760 billion dollars. Never mind that that has been tried for over a decade and every year, congress must reconvene to write a second check to Medicare. If he was a Reagan he'd go on TV and get the country behind him and pressure the congress to get this work done.  How many times?  As many as it takes, and as often as he needs to embarrass somebody to get it done.  I'm tired of excuses from both parties, but he has the big job...let him earn it.  He pointed fingers for four years, now he needs to get something.  Enough skating from Obama.