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Focus on Petraeus and Taxes as Obama Faces Media Obama Withholds Judgment on Petraeus Case
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — Finally, President Obama is holding a news conference. WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Wednesday that he had no evidence at this point that national security was compromised during David H. Petraeus’s affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
The last time the president stepped on a podium for an official press conference was in June, at the Group of 20 economic summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. And even then, he took only three, leaving the press assembled before him grumbling that even Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, had answered more queries from journalists at the meeting. Maintaining that “people are innocent until proven guilty,” the president said that while he did not want to “meddle” in the investigation, he hoped that the scandal that upended the career of Mr. Petraeus “ends up being a single side note on what ends up being en extraordinary career.”
Mr. Obama will presumably take more than three questions this time when he shows up in the East Room of the White House — the scheduled time is 1:30 p.m. Wednesday — now that he has won re-election. And reporters have been storing them up for five months, so there should be a broad array of topics. His remarks at a news conference were the first from Mr. Obama on the scandal, which erupted in public last week when Mr. Petraeus resigned, citing the extramarital affair.
Topping the list of subjects likely will be the affair that has upended the C.I.A. career of David H. Petraeus and is now threatening the career of Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the war effort in Afghanistan. “My main hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “General Petraeus has had an extraordinary career.”
But it is hard to imagine how much the president will be able to add to the bizarre tale that has emerged; Mr. Obama, White House officials say, did not learn of the affair until after the election. Still, the president is likely to come under questioning about why the F.B.I. started an investigation, and what he knows about General Allen’s role in the mess. The president used his first official news conference since June to urge haste in budget negotiations meant to avert abrupt shifts in taxes and spending at the end of the year, and he called on Congress to extend middle-class tax cuts immediately, before lawmakers begin working on a complete deficit agreement.
The president is also likely to be asked about the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. While Mr. Obama addressed the issue during the second debate with Mitt Romney, he has not had a news conference since before the attacks, so the reporters who cover him have not had a chance to engage in a public back-and-forth on the issue. He insisted that he would not agree to a similar extension of Bush-era tax rates on the highest levels of income.
Also likely is a focus on the debt negotiations with Congress that will soon be gathering steam, although asking Mr. Obama about that may just give him more space to repeat what he said last week — that he wants to see tax increases on the wealthy, and that he believes that exit polling shows that most Americans agree with him. “We should not hold the middle class hostage while we debate tax cuts on the wealthy,” the president declared in an opening statement. Appearing before reporters in the East Room of the White House, he said that “right now, our economy is still recovering from a very deep and damaging crisis, so our top priority has to be jobs and job creation.”
Though the president’s spokesman reaffirmed his $1.6 trillion target for new revenues on Tuesday, while Mr. Obama reassured progressives and labor leaders that he would stand firm against Congressional Republicans on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, expect plenty of questions about the “fiscal cliff.” He reiterated his pledge to push for increasing taxes on the wealthy, but added that an extension of the middle-class tax cuts must go into effect at once.
After the news conference, Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with about a dozen chief executives at the White House as part of his effort to get both business and labor to support raising around $1.6 trillion in new revenues, largely through taxes on business and the wealthy. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, has said that increased revenue, when combined with $1.1 trillion in spending cuts that have already been signed into law and additional savings from Medicare and Medicaid, would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years. He described two choices on taxes for the lame-duck Congress: either to allow taxes to rise across the board at all income levels, or to pass a bill extending tax cuts for all but those in the highest tax brackets.
He said that extending tax cuts at lower income levels would provide a stimulus and help avert a recession that some economists have warned would accompany the steep spending cuts and tax increases that have come to be called the “fiscal cliff.”
“Half of the danger to our economy is removed by that single step,” he said.
“We cannot afford to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy,” he insisted.
Mr. Obama and the four top Congressional leaders are set to meet Friday in the first round of what are likely to be grueling negotiations aimed at averting the year-end fiscal pileup of expiring tax breaks and across-the-board spending cuts.
Speaker John A. Boehner has been careful in his public comments so far to say that Republicans are willing to consider additional federal revenue raised through changes in the tax code and closing loopholes. The president has not so far insisted that tax rates will have to be raised, but analysts and Congressional Democrats say the revenue needed to make a dent in the deficit can not be generated solely through closing loopholes.
In advance of the news conference, the speaker’s office emphasized that House Republicans earlier this year passed legislation that would extend the Bush-era income tax cuts and head off cuts in military spending. But those bills were objectionable to Democrats and got not traction in the Democratic-controlled Senate, which for its part has already passed a bill extending tax cuts for the middle class.
After the news conference, Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with about a dozen business chief executives at the White House as part of his effort to get both business and labor to support raising around $1.6 trillion in new revenues over 10 years, largely through taxes on business and the wealthy. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, has said that increased revenue, when combined with $1.1 trillion in spending cuts that have already been signed into law and additional savings from Medicare and Medicaid, would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.
The last time the president stepped on a podium for an official news conference was in June, at the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. And even then, he took only three questions, leaving the press assembled before him grumbling that even Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, had answered more queries from journalists at the meeting.