President Barack Obama will be a guest on the Tom Joyner Morning show Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. to discuss the so-called fiscal cliff and the progress of striking a deal with congressional Republicans.
Their “math doesn’t work,” the president told Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg TV in his first interview since being reelected. “We’re going to have to have higher rates for the wealthiest Americans.”
Obama said of the middle class that he “can’t ask them to sacrifice and not ask anything of higher income folks,” and once again claimed tax rates for families making $250,000 or more must be raised to increase revenue.
Republicans earlier offered a deal that House Speaker John Boehner said would add $800 billion in additional revenue, but would not raise tax rates on the wealthy. The White House balked at the offer. In fact, White House spokesman Jay Carney called the Republican proposal, “magic beans and fairy dust.”
The Republican plan was made up of $300 billion in cuts to discretionary spending, $600 billion in “health savings,” $200 billion in changes to the consumer price index and another $300 billion in mandatory spending.
The White House offered a plan last week that called for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years that included a raise in taxes for top earners as well as $400 billion in savings for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
The president did add that he’s aware he won’t achieve “100 percent” of his deficit deal, but said he’s not willing to agree to revenue that’s “vague and potentially comes out of the pockets of middle-class families,” seniors and other vulnerable groups.
President Obama will look to make his case on the Tom Joyner show, which airs on KISS 104 FM from 5:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. in Atlanta.
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