Obama to push for 1-year extension of Bush tax cuts for middle-class

(CBS News) President Obama will launch on Monday a push to extend the so-called Bush tax cuts for low and middle-income Americans, but he will continue to fight for the cuts to expire on Jan. 1 for people earning more than $250,000.

A senior Obama campaign official confirmed to CBS News a report in The New York Times that President Obama would officially announce his call for a one-year extension to the tax cuts for Americans at or below that income threshold in a news conference on Monday.

Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs hinted at the announcement Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Gibbs said the president was "100 percent committed" to allowing some Bush-era tax cuts to expire, reports CBSNews.com's Leigh Ann Caldwell.

The series of tax cuts originally passed in 2001 and 2003 during George W. Bush's presidency, and later extended, are set to expire at the end of this year, explains Caldwell. In 2010, President Obama agreed to a two-year extension, but Gibbs gave on Sunday the first insight into the campaign's plan to block another extension for couples making more than $250,000.

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"We should protect the tax cuts for the middle-class, and we should let tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires expire," Gibbs told host Candy Crowley. "We have tried these different philosophies before; we know what tax breaks and tax cuts for the wealthy and [taking] financial regulations off of Wall Street mean. They mean economic calamity, they mean what we are dealing with now, versus a vision where we add jobs and build out the middle-class.

"Let's make some progress on our spending by doing away with tax cuts for people who quite frankly don't need them . . . and have them pay their fair share."

CBS Radio News White House correspondent Mark Knoller says the Obama campaign will try to amplify the President's message on middle class tax cuts with a series of campaign trail events in battleground states this week.

The events will include public discussions in Concord, New Hampshire, Las Vegas, Nevada, Aspen, Colorado and Tampa, Florida.