GOP Vows Debt Ceiling Showdown

Republicans went for a fiscal one-two against President Obama Tuesday, with Mitt Romney jabbing the president from the campaign stump and House speaker John Boehner saying he’d repeat last year’s debt-ceiling stalemate if he didn’t see cuts in federal spending. In January of the coming year, $8 trillion in tax increases and spending cuts are scheduled to kick in for Americans, and Boehner said in a speech on Capitol Hill that it’s time to cut out more spending and extend the Bush tax cuts. “To get on the path to prosperity, we have to avoid the fiscal cliff, but we need to start today,” Boehner said. Democrats criticized Boehner for threatening to hold the country’s finances hostage to serve his party’s ends.