President Obama cut his vacation short to return to Washington D.C., Thursday (Dec. 27) to resume fiscal cliff negotiations. As the year-end deadline draws closer, the commander in chief left Hawaii, the White House announced Tuesday.
Obama was scheduled to return back to work later in the week, but First Lady Michelle Obama and his daughters will remain on the island.
House Speaker John Boehner proposed a “plan B” option, which failed before it was even submitted for a vote, driving the notion that an agreement will not be reached before the end of the year. However, some lawmakers believe that their colleagues don’t truly understand that not reaching a deal will cause tax increases across the board, and could throw the country back into an economic turmoil. “It’s always hard to know how people process what they hear, how much they really understand,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said. “ Clearly the committees that deal with this, they understand.”
Boehner was depending on Republican votes to pass his proposal, but a headcount revealed that only 24 of the 241 House Republicans weren’t opposed to his idea, causing him to scrap the plan altogether.
The POTUS is seeking to raise taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 a year in order to keep taxes low on middle and lower class citizens.
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Photo: AP
