President Obama Leaves Vacation Early To Work On Fiscal Cliff Negotiations
President Obama is home from Hawaii early and ready to work on negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.
The President had made a tradition of spending the Christmas holiday in Hawaii but planned to leave on Wednesday to return to Washington and meet with lawmakers in an effort to keep the economy from going off the fiscal cliff. Obama is expected to be back by Thursday, and, meanwhile, Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha are remaining in Hawaii, The Huffington Post reported.
Congress was also expected to return on Thursday and will resume negotiations on how to stop the fiscal cliff. Automatic budget cuts and tax increases are set to take effect in January, hitting many middle class families and threatening to send the economy back into a recession. President Obama has been meeting with Republicans in an effort to come to an agreement to stop these things from happening, but so far no real progress has been made.
The fiscal cliff negotiations had appeared to be going somewhere in recent weeks, with Obama and House Speaker John Boehner close to a compromise, but, after Boehner decided to go forward with a s0-called “Plan B” that would extend tax breaks for all those making under $1 million a year, the process again fell apart.
President Obama’s Christmas vacation has not been all play, even before he left to continue fiscal cliff negotiations. On Christmas Day, he met with service members at a Marine base in Hawaii.
The Los Angeles Times quotes Obama who was giving a speech to several hundred people at Anderson Hall at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay:
“So many of you make sacrifices day in and day out on behalf of our freedom, on behalf of our security. And not only do those in uniform make sacrifices, but I think everybody here understands the sacrifices that families make each and every day as well.”
Fiscal cliff negotiations between President Obama and Republicans are expected to resume at the end of this week.
