President Barack Obama
- President Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States and will be sworn in for his second term in the White House January 20, 2013. He previously served Illinois in the U.S. Senate and in the Illinois State Senate.
- The president met with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the White House in an attempt to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff before the end-of-year deadline. President Obama called the meeting “good and constructive.” He said he is “moderately optimistic” a deal can be reached in time but the “hour for immediate action is here” and America’s “patience is already thin.”
- Going off the fiscal cliff may have some political advantages, according to the National Journal, but “cliff-diving also holds plenty of hazards for Obama” including damaging the economy, putting a greater emphasis on raising the debt ceiling, and becoming a distraction in the president's second term which would likely be “bogged down by negotiations.” The president’s second-term agenda could include fiscal issues such as taxes, spending, and the debt ceiling; immigration reform; and gun control.
- Watch his most recent appearance on Meet the Press.
Roundtable: Meacham, Goodwin, Brooks, Brokaw, Todd
- Jon Meacham is executive vice president at Random House, a Time magazine contributor, and the former editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Meacham recently wrote “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.” He said, “The most productive political periods of our history were times when people were able to get things done in that Jeffersonian way” in which leaders recognize “politics is not 100 percent business. It's maybe 60 percent business, 40 percent relationships.” Watch his most recent Meet the Press appearance and his PRESS Pass interview.
- Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of the Lincoln biography “Team of Rivals,” which is now a major motion picture. She said the most important aspect of President Lincoln was “willingness to compromise” and now “that kind of leadership is really going to be critical to make something happen.” Watch her most recent appearance on Meet the Press and her PRESS Pass interview.
- New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote that the president is not vulnerable now but will be when he is working on big projects in his second term. “The Republican strategy should be obvious. Swallow hard and accept a deal. End the showdown era. Achieve short-term fiscal stability. Don’t give away G.O.P. leverage on tax reform. Then focus on the bigger fight in 2013.” Here is his latest appearance.
- NBC’s Tom Brokaw recently said, “I think you have to start talking about the culture of violence in America. This has been a terrible year,” but during this year’s presidential campaign “there was almost no conversation about it.” Watch his latest appearance on the show here.
- Chuck Todd is NBC’s Political Director, Chief White House correspondent, and host of The Daily Rundown. This week on TDR he discussed who to watch for in 2013. Watch his most recent Meet the Press appearance.
Follow these guests on Twitter:
- President Barack Obama: @whitehouse / @BarackObama
- Tom Brokaw: @tombrokaw
- Jon Meacham: @jmeacham
- Doris Kearns Goodwin: @DorisKGoodwin
- David Brooks: @nytdavidbrooks
- Chuck Todd: @chucktodd
Also follow @KWelkerNBC and @meetthepress for live updates during the show.
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we're screwed and falling off
,
While you are speaking with the president, perhaps you could ask him to address this terrible, egregious, abhorrent remark from Steny Hoyer.
oyer compares GOP debt limit tactics to hostage taker threatening to shoot child
Posted by
CNN Senior Congressional Producer Deirdre Walsh
Washington (CNN) - Less than two weeks after one of the nation's deadliest school shootings, the No.2 Democrat in the U.S. House, Steny Hoyer, compared Republican tactics for dealing with the nation's debt limit to someone threatening to shoot a child hostage.
"It's somewhat like taking your child hostage and saying to somebody else, 'I'm going to shoot my child if you don't do what I want done.' You don't want to shoot your child. There's no Republican leader that wants to default on our debt, that I've talked to," Hoyer said at a Capitol Hill press conference.
Hoyer's comments came in response to a question about the Treasury Department's notice that the nation was approaching its debt limit. He criticized Republicans for previous resistance to raising the debt ceiling and used the gun analogy to argue that the issue should not be part of the negotiations involving the fiscal cliff.
In a session on the House floor lasting less than 10 minutes – and at which just a handful of members were present - Hoyer called on GOP leaders to bring the House back into session to craft a compromise to avert the fiscal cliff.
Shortly after Hoyer spoke to reporters, House Republican leaders held a conference call with their members and told them the House would reconvene on Sunday night - just a day before the year-end
Someone ask the President these questions:
Is McConnell's prize of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, going to be triggered for cuts in 2013, for a temporary tax rate hike on the top 1 %, that will devastate program beneficiaries, and later next fall, under Tax Rate Reform, lower the temporary rates to below what they are currently?
Why don't Seniors have a place in the Democratic Party and middle-class anymore?
Why do you need to bargain away senior paid insurance benefit programs, sentencing them to an existence of poverty, sickness and death?
Why will you meet with Wall Street Bankers and CEO's yet not meet with progressives like Senators Bernie Sanders and Tom Harkin to talk about the fiscal cliff?
I am now sixty, and I cannot afford the high cost of health insurance. I guess I now will have to wait until I'm sixty-seven instead of age sixty-five to be eligible for Medicare. Although not perfect is better than no insurance. Even with supplemental insurance than what I will have to pay now.
To Jon Meacham, Tom Brokaw:
Re: Comments on gun control
Somehow, you both seem to think that the Second Amendment is about hunting. I believe that you are both smart men, and well educated, so I can only conclude that you are deliberately attempting to mislead the audience. Shameful! Especially for you, Mr. Meacham! You plug your recent work on Jefferson, but seem to have missed the founders' strong views on the necessity of "the people" to have arms, in order to balance the inevitable (in their view) path that all governments take in their accrual of power. HUNTING HAS NO PLACE IN THE DISCUSSION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT! You know it, and your deliberate misdirection reflects either an intentional obtuseness on the issue, or worse, a real lack of integrity. Feel free to refute, if you can. I am confident you cannot, and will run any such discussion.