President Obama warned that he will veto any deficit plan brought to him by Congress that wasn't "balanced" between taxes and spending cuts.
"We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable," Obama said on Monday morning, speaking from the Rose Garden.
He rejected accusations that tax increases for the wealthy was "class warfare."
(RELATED: Text of Obama's Speech)
The president argued, as he has repeatedly, that wealthier Americans "shouldn't get a better deal than ordinary families."
"This is not class warfare; it's math. The money's going to have to come from some place," the president said, speaking to reporters. "If we're not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit, the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more. "
The president's plan calls for a combination of spending cuts and $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue increases that would save $3 trillion over the next decade.
Deficit reductions will total $4.4 trillion when new cuts are coupled with the $1.2 trillion in discretionary-spending reductions included in the bill signed into law by Obama last month after the debate over raising the debt ceiling.
The additional deficit reduction, the president says, would come from $1.5 trillion in tax reform; $580 billion in “cuts and reforms across all mandatory programs”; $430 billion from interest savings; and $1.1 trillion from the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, the changed mission in Iraq, and caps to limit spending on future overseas contingency operations.
The president's veto threat is a response to the hard line struck last week by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in a speech he delivered on the economy. Boehner said that tax reform should be on the super committee’s agenda. But he ruled out any tax increases, saying they “are not a viable option for the joint committee.”
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