Sessions calls for open fiscal talks with Obama

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demanded Thursday that fiscal talks between President Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) be more open.

“Over the last two years the Congress and president have held endless negotiations,” Sessions said on the floor Thursday. “The only thing these secret talks have produced is a government that skips from one crisis to the next.” 

Sessions said no member of the Senate has been invited to the deficit-reduction talks and that the president still hasn’t publicly released a plan to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

“All this secrecy allows the president to position himself by saying he’s for a balanced plan,” Sessions said.

Sessions said the only plan Obama has made public was his budget last year, which he said was a “tax and spend” plan that didn’t reduce the deficit.

“Tax and spend policy remains his goal today,” Sessions said. “Where are the spending reductions? ... It seems to be the plan is to talk in general and meet in secret.

“This process needs to be taken out of the shadows.”

Lawmakers are working to avoid the“fiscal cliff at the end of the year, when the Bush-era tax rates are set to expire and sequestration cuts take effect. So far Democrats have proposed that the Bush tax rates be extended for those making less than $250,000 a year, but Republicans have said tax increases would harm small-business owners and job creation.

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