Obama vows to 'move American people's agenda forward'
President Barack Obama has invited the leaders of the Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress to join him
in a meeting to discuss what to do in the waning days of this Congress' term, vowing it will "not be just a photo-op," he said Thursday.
"I want us to talk substantively about how to move the American people's agenda forward," he said.
Obama wants to discuss the future of the Bush-era tax cuts, he said. They're due to expire at the end of the year, and Republicans and Democrats disagree about whether -- or how -- to extend them.
"We have to act in order to assure that middle class families don't see a big tax spike because of how the Bush tax cuts have been structured," Obama said. "It is very important that we extend those middle class tax cuts."
Obama wants to let the tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans, while most Republicans do not want to single out the rich for different treatment.
The president said businesses also needed "certainty" about the future.
The meeting is set for November 18, he said.
It follows elections Tuesday in which Obama's Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and lost seats in the Senate. Current members of Congress keep their jobs until the end of the year, in what's known as the "lame-duck" session.
Obama conceded Wednesday that his party had taken a "shellacking" from the voters.
The Republican leader in the Senate has already signaled that he's more interested in rolling back what Obama has already done than in helping him push his agenda forward.
"For the past two years, Democrat lawmakers chose to ignore the American people, so on Tuesday the American people chose new lawmakers," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, is set to say in an address Thursday to the Heritage Foundation, according to excerpts from his office.
"The White House has a choice: they can change course, or they can double down on a vision of government that the American people have roundly rejected," he says.
But Obama used his brief statement after a Cabinet meeting to highlight his priorities.
He urged the lame-duck Congress not to drop the ball on an arms control agreement with Russia, saying it is neither a Republican nor a Democratic issue.
"We have negotiated with the Russians significant reductions in our nuclear arms" in the new START treaty, he said.
That has given the United States leverage over Iran's controversial nuclear program, he argued, because "people have seen that we are serious about taking our responsibilities when it comes to non-proliferation."
The Senate must approve international treaties for them to take effect.
Obama is also planning to meet newly elected governors from both parties, he said. He's invited them to the White House on December 2.
The meeting will be a "terrific opportunity to hear from them ... about what they're seeing, what ideas they think Washington needs to be paying attention to. They've got very practical problems that they've got to solve," he said, praising their "common-sense approach that the American people are looking for right now."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/04/obama.leaders/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
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