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Obama softens stance on taxes as he and Boehner seek a 'fiscal cliff' compromise
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Narrowing a "fiscal cliff" negotiating gap, President Barack Obama is backing off what had once been ironclad positions.
• A new proposal handed to House Speaker John Boehner on Monday drops Obama's long-held insistence that taxes rise on individuals earning more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000. He is now offering a new threshold of $400,000 and lowering his 10-year tax revenue goals from the $1.6 trillion he had argued for a few weeks ago.
• Obama also abandoned his demand for permanent borrowing authority. Instead, he is now asking for a new debt limit that would last two years, putting its renewal beyond the politics of a 2014 midterm election.
• And in a move sure to create heartburn among some congressional Democrats, Obama is proposing lower cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries, employing an inflation index that would have far-reaching consequences, including pushing more people into higher income tax brackets.
• Those changes, as well as Obama's decision not to seek an extension of a temporary payroll tax cut, would force higher tax payments on the middle class, a wide swath of the population that Obama has repeatedly said he wanted to protect from tax increases.
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Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, decorated veteran, dies at age 88 after 50-year Senate career
• HONOLULU (AP) -- On Dec. 7, 1941, high school senior Daniel Inouye knew he and other Japanese-Americans would face trouble when he saw Japanese dive bombers, torpedo planes and fighters on their way to bomb Pearl Harbor and other Oahu military bases.
• He and other Japanese-Americans had wanted desperately to be accepted, he said, and that meant going to war.
• "I felt that there was a need for us to demonstrate that we're just as good as anybody else," Inouye, who eventually went on to serve 50 years as a U.S. Senate from Hawaii, once said. "The price was bloody and expensive, but I felt we succeeded."
• Inouye, 88, died Monday of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital. As a senator, he became one of the most influential politicians in the country, (Continued on page 30)
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