Obama, GOP Leaders Lay Down Markers On Budget Deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is setting out to leverage his re-election into legislative success in an upcoming showdown with congressional Republicans over taxes, deficits and the impending "fiscal cliff."

House Speaker John Boehner says Republicans are willing to consider some form of higher tax revenue as part of the solution — but only under what he calls "the right conditions."

All sides are setting out opening arguments for the negotiations to come.

Even before returning to Washington from his hometown of Chicago, Obama was on the phone Wednesday with the four top leaders of the House and Senate — Boehner included — to talk about the lame-duck Congress that convenes just one week after Election Day.