Under pressure, Obama backs fiscal commission

In a dramatic concession to senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Obama abruptly shifted his position Saturday and declared his public support for creating a fiscal commission that could propose sweeping tax increases and spending cuts to try to slash the soaring federal debt.

The White House released an unexpected written statement from Obama saying he now backs putting together a powerful commission created through a federal statute, a reversal from earlier this week when Vice President Joe Biden signaled in a private meeting with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.Dakota, and other key lawmakers that the administration would only support a weaker version of the commission by forming it through an executive order...

...Such recommendations could include cuts to popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, which is why some liberals are opposed to formation of the commission; or proposals to drastically raise taxes to make up for budget shortfalls, which is why some conservatives have blasted the idea.

Axelrod refuses to rule out tax increases to deal with deficit

President Barack Obama's senior adviser on Sunday refused to rule out tax increases as part of a solution to the nation's growing deficit.

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," David Axelrod said Obama supported having Congress set up a bipartisan commission that would come up with a plan to reduce the deficit...

...Asked about the possibility of tax increases, Axelrod said: "If anybody has a plan to do this without raising any taxes on anybody, upper income or below, they should come forward with it because nobody wants to raise taxes."

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama repeatedly promised he would not raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year.

The rich are already paying far too much in taxes, where do you think these increases will come from. Since the beginning, since the campaign, it's only been a matter of time before we reached this point if Obama's programs were implemented. This will result in one of the biggest "I told you so"s ever when it happens.

I'm close to calling 2012 already...you can't have Republicans hate you and continue to tick off Democrats and win re-election, not to mention lose 20 or so percent approval from independents, which is why he was elected any way. "You can make some people happy all of the time and all of the people happy some of the time, but you can't make all the people happy all the time." A hard lesson Obama is learning.