WATCH: Obama Asks Congress To Drink Egg Nog, Not Tank Economy

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/8033165096/sizes/z/in/photostream/">White House</a>/Flickr

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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:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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