<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/8033165096/sizes/z/in/photostream/">White House</a>/Flickr
President Barack Obama’s message to Congress on Friday was straightforward. “Pour some egg nog, have some Christmas cookies, sing some Christmas carols, enjoy the company of loved ones,” he said at a press conference at the White House—and don’t mess up the economic recovery. In his first public statements on the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations since the collapse of the Republican alternative “Plan B,” Obama hinted at a more piecemeal package than had initially been discussed, with Congress working on a compromise plan on the Bush tax cuts next week.
On Thursday night, shortly before Congress adjourned for Christmas, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) canceled a scheduled vote on “Plan B” (which among other things extended the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less than $1 million a year while raising the top tax rate to Clinton-era levels) because he didn’t have the votes for it within his own caucus. The demise of Plan B, which Boehner had personally lobbied for on the House floor, was a victory for the party’s most conservative members, and almost immediately sparked speculation about whether Boehner’s days as Speaker are numbered. (National Review‘s Robert Costa has the best play-by-play of the chaos at the Capitol I’ve seen.)
So what’s next? Congress has until Dec. 31 to take some sort of action. Or it could just go off “the cliff”—in which case all the Bush tax cuts will expire and massive spending cuts scheduled as part of 2011’s debt ceiling deal would go into effect.
In the meantime, enjoy your egg nog, I guess.
You can watch the president’s statement right here:
