U.S. House Speaker urges Obama to lead on debt talks

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A bipartisan deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" should include entitlement reform, tax reform and lower tax rates, Boehner told reporters at a Friday press conference, adding that he was hopeful that "productive conversations" could begin soon.

The top Republican lawmaker of the House stressed that he opposed higher tax rates to solve the nation's fiscal challenge, citing a study from Ernst & Young that raising the income tax rates for the wealthy would destroy nearly 700,000 jobs in the country.

Unless U.S. Congress acts by the end of this year, a combination of tax hikes and sweeping⁴ spending cuts, dubbed⁵ as the "fiscal cliff" and with the combined amount of about 600 billion U. S. dollars, was set to kick in. Democrats⁶ and Republicans locked horns over how to reduce the nation's public debt hovering⁷ at 16.2 trillion dollars and tide over the "fiscal cliff."

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