Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama is scheduled to undertake domestic travel in the coming week according to a White House communique.
Obama is planning to hold town hall meetings in “Northern Virginia, Palo Alto, California and Reno, Nevada to speak directly to the American people about his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit, based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity,” the White House said.
On the return flight from Chicago on Friday, Jay Carney, presidential spokesman called Obama’s two urgent tasks as one to pursue Congress to immediately raise the ceiling on U.S. debt and the other to move with urgency towards deficit reduction.
On the first task, Carney said, “That shouldn’t be linked or held hostage to any other action because the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling — those consequences would be catastrophic to the American economy, to the global economy and to America’s creditworthiness internationally.”
About efforts towards deficit reduction, Carney said the president, “asked the Vice President to oversee and leaders of Congress to appoint members to participate in where they can come together and begin to negotiate areas where we can agree to bring about further deficit reduction in a balanced way that can achieve the kind of results that we think are what America needs economically and for our future.”
Citing both as “urgent … but … not linked,” Carney reiterated, “With regards to the debt ceiling, it cannot be linked or held hostage to something that wouldn’t pass — couldn’t reach consensus. It has to be done. All the leaders of Congress of both parties have said that, and we obviously share that sentiment.”
Carney hinted that the president was ready for compromise on his targets while negotiating with Republicans, saying, “He recognizes he’s not going to get 100 percent of what he wants or that it’s not going to be his way only, and Republicans need to recognize that, which is how we ended up with an agreement last week on the funding for the 2011 budget.”
Carney noted that the president Obama believed Congressman Paul Ryan of the budget committee “is absolutely sincere and that he believes that this is the right — that that’s the right path, the one he put forward is the right path for America.”
On the disagreement part, Carney said, “He (Obama) doesn’t think that it’s (Ryan’s budget proposal) balanced.”
Explaining the disparities, Carney said, “He doesn’t think that we need to — that the price of deficit reduction needs to be ending the guarantee, the health benefits that Medicare has provided our seniors, cutting energy — clean energy investment by 70 percent, cutting education by 25 percent, cutting infrastructure by 30 percent — and all so that we can not just reduce the deficit but so that we can extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and give new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”
With the count-down to 2012 presidential election ticking and Obama already an official candidate, the incumbent needs to sell his policies to voters who are not diehard rock star Obama fans.
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