President Obama's remarks on the fiscal cliff negotiations, Dec. 28, 2012 (Transcript) PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good afternoon everybody. For the past couple of months, I've been working with leaders of both parties to try and forge an agreement that would grow our economy and shrink the deficit; a balanced plan that would cut spending in a responsible way, but also ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more and above all, protect our middle class and everybody who's striving to get into the middle class. I still want to get done. It's the right thing to do for our families, for our businesses and for our entire economy. But the hour for immediate action is here. It is now. We're now at the point where in just four days, every Americans tax rates are scheduled to go up by law. Every Americans paycheck will get considerably smaller and that would be the wrong thing to do. For our economy, it would be bad for middle-class families and it would be bad for businesses that depend on family spending. Fortunately, Congress can prevent it from happening if they act right now. I just had a good and constructive discussion here at the White House with Senate and House leadership about how to prevent this tax hike on the middle class and I'm optimistic we may still be able to reach an agreement that can pass both Houses in time. Senators Reid and McConnell are working on such an agreement as we speak. But, if an agreement isn't reached in time between Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, then I will urge Senator Reid to bring to the floor a basic package for an up or down vote, one that protects the middle class from an income tax hike, extends the vital lifeline of unemployment insurance to two million Americans looking for a job and lays the groundwork for future cooperation on more economic growth and deficit reduction. You guys, I can hear you over there. I believe such a proposal could pass both Houses with bipartisan majorities as long as those leaders allow it to actually come to a vote. If members of the House or the Senate want to vote no, they can, but we should let everybody vote. That's the way this is supposed to work. If you can get a majority in the House and you can get a majority in the Senate, then we should be able to pass a bill. So the American people are watching what we do here. Obviously, their patience is already thin. This is deja vu all over again. America wonders why it is that in this town for some reason you can't get stuff done in an organized timetable, why everything always has to wait until the last minute, well we're now at the last minute and the American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy, not right now. They economy's growing but sustaining that trend is going to require elected officials to do their jobs. The housing market is recovering but that could be impacted if folks are seeing smaller paychecks.