Obama open to a ‘big deal’ on budget, but wants revenues

In a foreshadowing of more budget battles to come, Obama said he would insist that taxes be raised by closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy, as a way to raise money for spending projects. “The rest of the way moving forward, we can do some additional reforms, and make our health care programs work better, and make them more efficient, and we can cut out programs that we don’t need,” he said. “But it also means that we’ve got to be able to close some tax loopholes that the average American cannot take advantage of, to raise the revenue to actually do the job in a way that allows us to continue to grow,” he told House Democrats.

The months following Obama’s re-election in November have been dominated by confrontations with congressional Republicans over budget and fiscal issues. While the two sides were able to avoid steep cuts and tax hikes from going into effect at year end and have for

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