House Speaker John Boehner says additional tax hikes are out of the question.

Speaker of the House John Boehner
Speaker of the House John Boehner (Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
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He's reacting ahead of time to President Barack Obama's request this afternoon for Congress to come up with tens of billions of dollars in short-term spending cuts and tax revenue. The goal is to put off the automatic across-the-board cuts that would take effect on the first of March, and allow time to work out a 10-year plan that includes more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction.

In a statement, Boehner says Americans "do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes."

The automatic cuts, if they are allowed to proceed, could lead to widespread layoffs, and hit hard at some defense programs and domestic spending accounts.

White House officials say Obama will ask for a targeted way to reduce the deficit in the short term, perhaps several months. He has insisted that any efforts to reduce the deficit be "balanced" between spending cuts and new tax revenue.

Obama already won about $600 billion in higher taxes at the start of the year, and congressional Republicans say they are not about to approve more tax revenue.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved)

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