Obama Tells G.O.P. Not to Tie Debt Ceiling to Fiscal Debate

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama spoke to members of the Business Roundtable in Washington on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Republicans on Wednesday not to use the debt ceiling as leverage on spending and tax decisions, saying he refused to engage again in the sort of brinkmanship that brought the country close to default last year and damaged its credit rating.

In a speech to the Business Roundtable, Mr. Obama called that irresponsible. “That is a bad strategy for America, it’s a bad strategy for your businesses and it is not a game that I will play,” he said. “Everybody here is concerned about uncertainty. There’s no uncertainty like the prospect that the United States of America, the largest economy, that holds the world’s reserve currency, potentially defaults on its debts.”

While saying he would not “play that game,” a phrase he repeated, Mr. Obama did not say what he would do in response, but some Democrats have urged him in the past to simply raise the borrowing limit using his own executive authority and let the courts determine if he overstepped his constitutional bounds.

He seemed to embrace a suggestion by John Engler, the Business Roundtable president, to raise the debt ceiling enough to last five years. “John is exactly right when he says that the only thing that the debt ceiling is good for as a weapon is just to destroy your credit rating,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama was reacting to reports that Republican leadership officials were looking for a fallback in the current debate to avert an end-of-the-year fiscal crisis. Some Republicans foresee accepting Mr. Obama’s call to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while allowing them to expire for the wealthiest Americans, and then taking up the fight again when the nation’s debt rises to the point that the statutory borrowing limit needs to be raised again, which could be in late January or February.

Republicans view any vote to raise the debt ceiling as a chance to enforce more fiscal discipline on Mr. Obama. Speaker John A. Boehner has said any increase in borrowing capacity should be offset by spending cuts that exceed the increased debt. Mr. Obama has responded by proposing to take away the Congressional power to approve increases in the debt ceiling, but Mr. Boehner said last weekend that “Congress is never going to give up this power.”

Appearing before reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Boehner and other House Republican leaders implored Mr. Obama to sit down with them and begin negotiating in earnest to head off the looming fiscal crisis, but with flattery and aggravation, they made it clear that they were now playing on his turf.

Mr. Boehner and his leadership team did not give an inch on their opposition to raising tax rates on the wealthy or their insistence that any deficit-reduction plan emphasize spending cuts. But the speaker sounded exasperated as he insisted that he had moved toward the president’s position by agreeing to $800 billion in higher tax revenue over 10 years.

“The revenues we’re putting on the table will come from guess who? The rich,” he said, his voice rising. “There are ways to limit deductions, close loopholes and have the same people pay more of their money to the federal government without raising tax rates.”

Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois, a member of the Republican leadership, appealed to Mr. Obama’s own view of himself as a politician able to rise above partisanship, a characterization Republicans have rarely, if ever, agreed with.

“I’ve seen an attribute in President Obama when we served together in the Illinois State Senate, where he was able to rise above donkeys and elephants and transform some very controversial issues in a way that was powerful,” Mr. Roskam said, imploring the president to eschew the politics of the victor and seize “an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president, that is to bring the country together.”

The dueling public appearances underscored how far apart the two sides were, at least as a matter of principle. Mr. Obama’s plan calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, mainly through allowing rates to rise on income above $200,000 a year for individuals or $250,000 for families. He has also revived a year-old plan to trim health care and other mandatory spending by $600 billion over 10 years, but he also wants to spend $50 billion in the short term to help the economy.

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Bielema agrees to leave Wisconsin for Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema is taking his brand of power football to Arkansas.

Bielema has agreed to become the new coach of the Razorbacks, according to a person familiar with the situation that was first reported by Yahoo Sports.

The person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the school had not announced the hire, said a news conference was planned for Wednesday. Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long tweeted that an announcement was planned Tuesday evening.

"He's the guy Jeff was after all along," the person said of Long. "It's hard to get these coaches to sit still."

Another person familiar with the situation said Bielema's deal is for six years, paying $3.2 million annually.

Bielema is leaving the Big Ten for the SEC and a Razorbacks program that opened the year with hopes of challenging for a national championship only to get mired in the Bobby Petrino scandal before stumbling to a 4-8 finish.

The move was the second stunning hire this year at Arkansas, which brought in John L. Smith as the interim coach after firing Petrino for hiring his mistress to work in the athletic department.

Bielema seems likely to bring a far different approach than what the Razorbacks have become accustomed to. Arkansas continually ranked among the Southeastern Conference's best passing teams under Petrino while Bielema is known for his dominant offensive lines and slew of running backs.

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball tied Barry Sanders' long-standing single-season record of 39 touchdowns last year, and this year became the all-time FBS leader in touchdowns. He currently has 82 touchdowns after running for three in Saturday's Big Ten title game against Nebraska — a 70-31 romp that secured the Badgers third straight trip to the Rose Bowl, where they will play Stanford on Jan. 1.

Bielema is in his seventh season as Barry Alvarez's hand-picked successor at Wisconsin. He's 68-24 with the Badgers, with four double-digit win seasons, and he coached Wisconsin to a 17-14 win over Arkansas in his first season at the Capital One Bowl.

The 42-year-old Bielema was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin for two years before being promoted to head coach in 2006. He played for Iowa and started his coaching career there as an assistant under Hayden Fry and later Kirk Ferentz.

The Illinois native takes over a program still reeling following the April scandal, one eager for stability and leadership.

"I'm excited about this decision," Arkansas cornerback Tevin Mitchel tweeted.

The Razorbacks improved their win total in four straight seasons under Petrino, including a 21-5 mark in 2010-11, and finished last season ranked No. 5. They had talked openly in the spring about competing for the school's first SEC championship and perhaps a national title.

Then came the April 1 motorcycle accident that led to Petrino's downfall. The married father of four initially lied about being alone during the wreck, later admitting to riding with his mistress — a former Arkansas volleyball player he had hired to work in the athletic department.

Smith, who had been an assistant the last three seasons at Arkansas under Petrino, was chosen by Long to guide a team that returned first-team All-SEC quarterback Tyler Wilson and a host of other key playmakers. The decision was lauded by the Razorbacks, who welcomed the personable Smith back with open arms.

The season hit the skids with a stunning overtime loss to Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 8, starting a four-game losing streak that dropped Arkansas out of the rankings. The Razorbacks finished with the school's lowest win total since 2005, missing a bowl game for the first time since 2008.

"It's very difficult for me to believe that is not a bowl-eligible team," LSU coach Les Miles said following the Tigers' win over the Razorbacks in the season finale. "Watching the talent there, (it's) very capable."

Arkansas struggled to find its identity in the SEC after leaving the former Southwest Conference in 1992, but it appeared to have finally found just that under Petrino, who was hired after leaving the Atlanta Falcons during the season in 2007.

The Razorbacks turned into an offensive powerhouse under Petrino, leading the league in scoring and total offense last season. After winning 10 games and reaching the school's first BCS bowl game in 2010, losing to Ohio State, Arkansas won 11 games in 2011, capped by a Cotton Bowl win over Kansas State.

Still, Arkansas has yet to win the SEC, losing in the conference championship game three times.

While the country watched closely to see how Arkansas would react following Petrino's dismissal, Smith made headlines of his own throughout the season. The former Michigan State and Louisville coach filed for bankruptcy during the season, revealing $40.7 million in debt he blamed on bad land deals.

He was under far more fire from Arkansas fans for the mounting losses and it will be up to Bielema to turn things around in the loaded SEC West, with Alabama, LSU and now Texas A&M.

Long said during the season that the new coach would be tasked with building on the recent success at the school, which is looking into expanding the 72,000-seat Razorback Stadium and is currently building an 80,000-square-foot football operations center.

"Our new coach will be an individual who shares the passion for success our fans do, and who is willing to work relentlessly to achieve our goals," Long said following the announcement of Smith's departure.

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European Finance Ministers Deadlock on Plan to Oversee Banks

BRUSSELS — Finance ministers of the European Union were deadlocked Tuesday over how to create a single banking supervisor for the euro zone, delaying a decision on a new system that is supposed to prevent future financial crises.

The ministers agreed to reconvene next week, a day ahead of a summit meeting of European Union leaders who had been hoping to focus discussion on the design of a banking union — something the leaders agreed last summer to establish as a way to safeguard the industry after member countries racked up enormous debts bailing out their banks.

That agreement in June had called for setting up the single regulator under the European Central Bank. And the bloc’s administrative arm, the European Commission, has proposed phasing in the system beginning Jan. 1.

But the deadlock on Tuesday indicated that there was sharp disagreement among member states over how many banks in the euro currency union should be covered by the new system; how to ensure that countries outside the currency union have a way to rebuff regulations they dislike; and how to ensure that the European Central Bank would keep monetary policy separate from its decisions on bank supervision.

After ministers failed to reach agreement Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting, Vassos Shiarly, the finance minister of Cyprus, the country holding the Union’s rotating presidency, set another session for Dec. 12.

If ministers fail to reach agreement at that meeting, the E.U. leaders will arrive at their summit meeting the following day without a cornerstone in place for the banking union. One of the goals for the union could eventually be to issue debt jointly backed by euro zone countries, as a way to buffer the sort of interest rate spikes that have often bedeviled weaker countries, including Spain.

Some ministers warned on Tuesday that further delays in designing the banking union could lead to a return of acute financial pressures in the euro zone. “If we are not able to deliver in the dates we have committed, this will not be neutral in terms of the stability of the markets,” said Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister.

For Spain, stricter supervision was supposed to be the condition for using European funds to bail out its troubled banks directly and a way to avoid accumulating more sovereign debt. Once the supervisor is in place, Spain wants the money it is drawing upon for its bailout to be moved off its government ledgers.

But France and Germany remained divided over the new banking rules on Tuesday. That is a significant obstacle because agreement between the two countries usually is needed to accomplish major reforms in Europe.

Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, told the meeting that the new rules should apply to all lenders rather than lead to a two-tier system.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has suggested that the system could eventually apply to all 6,000 banks in the euro zone. But some German officials and industry groups would rather have the new centralized oversight apply only to the biggest European banks, and leave regulation of the country's smaller savings banks in the hands of national officials.

French officials have stressed the need for a system that covers all euro zone banks. Otherwise, the French have warned, any sudden intervention by the E.C.B. into the affairs of a bank under national regulation could raise alarm among investors and depositors and even lead to bank runs.

But Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said Tuesday that trying to give too much central authority to a new banking regulator would meet stiff political opposition in his country.

“I think it would be very difficult to get an approval by the German Parliament if you would leave the supervision for all the German banks to European banking supervision,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting. “Nobody believes that any European institution will be capable to supervise 6,000 banks in Europe.”

The government in Berlin has complained that overly rapid implementation of the rules could lead to regulatory loopholes. German state governments also have balked at giving the central bank oversight of their sparkassen, the hundreds of small and midsize savings banks that do much of the lending to consumers and small businesses.

Germany also refused to support one of the main British demands: new voting rules to ensure that lenders based in London continue to be regulated by Britain.

Yet another concern for Mr. Schäuble was whether placing so much supervisory power within the European Central Bank could lead the central bank to compromise its decisions on monetary policy — if, for example, the E.C.B. were setting interest rates while also trying to oversee politically sensitive issues like bank bailouts.

“In the long run, you will damage the independence of the central bank,” Mr. Schäuble told the meeting.

Germany is the biggest financial contributor to the European Union, and establishing the single supervisory system could oblige Ms. Merkel to dip into the treasury to help prop up weaker European banks, like many of those in Spain. Such aid could be an issue for German taxpayers, ahead of national elections in their country next September. German citizens have already grown weary of paying most of the bill for bailouts, and they are wary of using more money to help banks in vulnerable southern European countries.

Another issue to be resolved in coming weeks will be the leadership of the group of ministers who oversee the euro area.

Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been the group's president since 2005, reiterated at a news conference Monday night that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.

But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor to the post, which gives the holder significant power over the agendas of their meetings.

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Terms of Greek Bond Buyback Top Expectations

LONDON — In a bold bid to reduce its debt burden, Greece offered on Monday to spend as much as 10 billion euros to buy back 30 billion euros of its bonds from investors and banks.

While the buyback had been expected, the prices offered by the government were above what the market had forecast, with a minimum price of 30 euro cents and a maximum of 40 cents, for a discount of 60 percent to 70 percent.

Analysts said they expected that the average price would ultimately be 32 to 34 euro cents, a premium of about 4 cents above where the bonds traded at the end of last week.

Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, played down concerns that the Greek debt buyback might not go as planned.

“I have no particular anxiety about this,” Mr. Moscovici said Monday at the European Parliament ahead of the meeting in Brussels of euro zone finance ministers to discuss Greece. “It just has to be very quick.”

A successful buyback is critical for Greece. The International Monetary Fund has said that it will lend more money to Greece only if it is reasonably able to show that it is on target to achieve a ratio of debt to annual gross domestic product of less than 110 percent by 2022.

Greece will have at its disposal 10 billion euros, or $13 billion, in borrowed money from Europe. Investors who agree to trade in their Greek bonds will receive six-month treasury bills issued by Europe’s rescue vehicle, the European Financial Stability Facility. The offer will close Friday.

If successful, the exchange will retire about half of Greece’s 62 billion euros in debt owed to the private sector. The country still owes about 200 billion euros to European governments and the I.M.F.

Analysts said that Greek, Cypriot and other government-controlled European banks, which have as much as 20 billion euros worth of bonds, were expected to agree to the deal at a price in the low 30s. That would mean that to complete the transaction, hedge-fund holdings of 8 billion to 10 billion euros in bonds would have to be tendered at a price below 35 cents. Any higher price would mean that Greece would have to ask its European creditors for extra money — an unlikely outcome at this stage.

Even though Greece is so close to bankruptcy, its bonds have become one of the hot investments in Europe. Large hedge funds, like Third Point and Brevan Howard, have accumulated significant stakes, starting this summer when the bonds were trading in the low teens. Shorter-term traders have been snapping up bonds at around 29 cents to make a quick profit by participating in the buyback.

In a research note published Monday, analysts at Nomura in London said it was “reasonable and likely” that enough hedge funds — especially those that might be more risk-averse and or have a shorter perspective — would agree to the deal at a price below 35 cents.

But there are also foreign investors looking to the longer term who may decide to hold onto most of their holdings in the hope that the bonds rally even more after a successful buyback.

“I think the bonds could go to as high as 40 cents in a nonexit scenario,” said Gabriel Sterne, an analyst at Exotix in London, referring to the consensus view that Greece will not leave the euro zone anytime soon.

Bondholders were encouraged by comments from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, reported in the German news media over the weekend, that raised the possibility that European governments might offer Greece debt relief in the future. A number of bondholders expect Greek bond yields to trade more in line with those of Portugal in the coming years, but without the prospect of a future buyback to push up the prices of Greek government bonds, the risk to such an approach is substantial.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the group of finance ministers whose countries use the euro, told a news conference late Monday in Brussels that ministers would meet again on the morning of Dec. 13 to make a final decision on aid disbursement to Greece.

Mr. Juncker said he was confident that Greece would receive its money on that date, but he declined to comment on the prospects for success of the buyback program because it was a sensitive matter for the financial markets.

Mr. Juncker has been the president of the group of ministers since 2005, and the post gives him significant power over what is discussed at the group’s meetings.

Mr. Juncker reiterated at the news conference that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor.

“I don’t have to endorse anyone,” Mr. Juncker said. “I was asking my colleagues to provide for my succession,” he said, referring to discussions held with ministers earlier in the evening.

Separately, Spain, which is also seeking to overcome crippling debt problems, began the process Monday of formally requesting 39.5 billion euros in emergency aid to recapitalize its banks. It also announced that a tax amnesty had yielded only 1.2 billion euros, less than half what the government had expected.

The request for emergency aid was being sent to authorities managing the euro zone bailout funds, according to Spanish officials, who added that no further approval would be needed from ministers meeting in Brussels.

The request follows the European Commission’s approval last week of a plan to make the granting of the aid conditional on thousands of layoffs and office closings at four Spanish banks: Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia.

James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.

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Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4

Besides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.

This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?

​A glass back

With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.

While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.

​No 4G

Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).

The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.

​Selling out fast

Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.

How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.

​Public relations nightmares

It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.

On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Heisman finalists: Manziel, Te'o and Klein

NEW YORK (AP) — Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein are the finalists for the Heisman Trophy.

The three players invited to attend the presentation ceremony in New York were announced Monday on ESPN.

Manziel is the favorite to win college football's most famous player of the year award on Saturday night in Manhattan. He would be the first freshman to win the Heisman and the first Texas A&M player since halfback John David Crow won the school's only Heisman in 1957.

The closest a freshman has come to winning the Heisman was Adrian Peterson of Oklahoma in 2004, when he finished second to Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart. Peterson was a true freshman. Manziel is a redshirt freshman, meaning he attended school last year and practiced with the team but did not play in a game.

Michael Vick of Virginia Tech came in third in 1999 as a redshirt freshman and Herschel Walker was a true freshman for Georgia in 1980 when he finished third in the Heisman balloting.

Nicknamed Johnny Football, Manziel quickly became a national sensation this season, putting up huge numbers in first-year Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin's spread offense. He led the 10th-ranked Aggies to a 10-2 record in their first season in the Southeastern Conference.

With a knack for improvisation, Manziel racked up an SEC-record 4,600 yards of total offense, including 1,181 rushing to lead the conference. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound Manziel zoomed to the front of the Heisman race on Nov. 10, when he passed for 253 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 92 yards as the Aggies upset then-No. 1 Alabama 29-24 in Tuscaloosa.

Manziel and Texas A&M will play Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.

Te'o is trying to become the first defense-only player to win the Heisman. The Fighting Irish have seven Heisman winners, tied for the most with Ohio State and Southern California, but none since Tim Brown in 1987.

He became the face of the No. 1 team in the country and leader of a defense that has been the toughest to score upon in the nation. The senior intercepted seven passes, second-most in the country and tops for a linebacker. He also led the Fighting Irish with 103 tackles, and earlier Monday won the Butkus Award as country's best linebacker.

Te'o and the Irish face No. 2 Alabama in the BCS championship game on Jan. 7 in Miami.

Klein would be the first player from Kansas State to win the Heisman. He seemed to be the front-runner for several weeks until Manziel's late push. When Klein threw three interceptions in the Wildcats' late-season loss to Baylor, Manziel moved to the front of the race.

Klein is a multitalented quarterback like Manziel, but with a different approach. The 6-5, 226-pound senior is a bullish runner who scored 22 touchdowns and threw for 15 more, while leading the seventh-ranked Wildcats (11-1) to the Big 12 title. Earlier in the day, Klein won the Johnny Unitas Award given to the top senior quarterback in the nation.

Kansas State plays Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.

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Global Update: GlaxoSmithKline Tops Access to Medicines Index

Sang Tan/Associated Press

GlaxoSmithKline hung on to its perennial top spot in the new Access to Medicines Index released last week, but its competitors are closing in.

Every two years, the index ranks the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies based on how readily they get medicines they hold patents on to the world’s poor, how much research they do on tropical diseases, how ethically they conduct clinical trials in poor countries, and similar issues.

Johnson & Johnson shot up to second place, while AstraZeneca fell to 16th from 7th. AstraZeneca has had major management shake-ups. It did not do less, but the industry is improving so rapidly that others outscored it, the report said.

The index was greeted with skepticism by some drugmakers when it was introduced in 2008. But now 19 of the 20 companies have a board member or subcommittee tracking how well they do at what the index measures, said David Sampson, the chief author.

The one exception was a Japanese company. As before, Japanese drugmakers ranked at or near the index’s bottom, and European companies clustered near the top. Generic companies — most of them Indian — that export to poor countries are ranked separately.

Johnson & Johnson moved up because it created an access team, disclosed more and bought Crucell, a vaccine company.

The foundation that creates the index now has enough money to continue for five more years, said its founder, Wim Leereveld, a former pharmaceutical executive.

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In ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Talks, First Step Is the Hardest

WASHINGTON — For all the growing angst over the state of negotiations to head off a fiscal crisis in January, the parties are farthest apart on a relatively small part of the overall deficit reduction program — the down payment.

President Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, are in general agreement on the overarching issue: that the relevant Congressional committees must sit down next year and work out changes to the tax code and entitlement programs to save well more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

But before that work begins, both men want Congress to approve a first installment on deficit reduction that would replace the automatic spending cuts and tax increases that make up the “fiscal cliff,” while signaling Washington’s seriousness about getting its fiscal house in order. That is where the chasm lies in size and scope.

Mr. Obama says the down payment should be large, real and made up almost completely of tax increases on top incomes. He is putting such emphasis on the tax increases partly because he and Congressional leaders last year agreed on some spending cuts over the next decade but have yet to agree on any tax increases.

Republicans have countered by arguing for a smaller down payment that must include immediate savings from Medicare and other entitlements. Republicans, using almost the mirror-image language of Mr. Obama, have said that they do not want to agree to specific tax increases and vague promises of future spending cuts.

“I think there’s a lot of confusion between the initial down payment and the framework. That’s for sure,” said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and part of a bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators who devised the two-stage process.

The two sides are trying to get to a deal that would start with a specific down payment and then fix targets for larger savings in the tax code and entitlement programs. They are expected to spend much of the next year hashing out the specific policy changes needed to hit those targets.

The argument over the size of the down payment is critical. Republicans and Democrats alike worry that canceling roughly $600 billion in deficit-reducing tax increases and spending cuts next year might spook financial markets, which could take the move as proof that the United States’ fiscal problems are politically intractable.

But neither side believes Congress could meaningfully overhaul the main drivers of future deficits — Medicare and Medicaid — in the four weeks that remain before the fiscal deadline.

“Entitlement reform is a big step, and it affects tens of millions of people,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and another architect of the two-stage framework. “It’s not just a matter of cutting spending in an appropriation. It’s changing policy. And that’s why I was reluctant to include it in the down-payment conversation. I want this to be a thoughtful effort on both sides that doesn’t jeopardize this program.”

Republican leaders have said that they are willing to raise new revenues in a broad deficit deal, but they want taxes to rise by closing loopholes and curbing tax deductions and credits — a tall order for Congress in a year, let alone a month. They explicitly do not want to allow tax rates to rise on income over $250,000, an issue that is becoming the main stumbling block in the talks.

Mr. Obama is seeking to lock in $1.6 trillion in higher revenue as the bulk of the first stage of deficit reductions before stage two even begins. House Republicans say the down payment should be at least $110 billion, the value of the automatic spending cuts they would cancel next year, and they want those savings to come largely from cuts in Medicare and other benefit programs.

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A Spate of Rebranding for Spanish-Language Television

It’s a race to be the best of the second best. On Monday, Univision, the dominant Spanish-language network in the United States, will announce a new name and look for its second-largest network, TeleFutura. The move is a direct shot at Telemundo, a rival for second place among domestic Spanish-speaking viewers.

RTI Colombia

A scene from the new show “Quien Eres Tu” on Univision’s newly named UniMás network.

Telemundo

Telemundo’s redesigned “T” logo.

John Van Beekum for The New York Times

"We have been focused on making TeleFutura the undisputed No. 2 Spanish-language network in the U.S. behind Univision,” said Cesar Conde, the president of Univision Networks.

The new name for the network will be UniMás. The network will offer new content and a consumer marketing campaign aimed at a younger, male Latino demographic. The rebranding of TeleFutura is also the latest effort from Univision to connect all of its properties under the Univision brand. The moves will be announced at an industry event in New York City on Monday, and the revamped network will make its debut on Jan. 7.

“We have been focused on making TeleFutura the undisputed No. 2 Spanish-language network in the U.S. behind Univision,” César Conde, the president of Univision Networks, said in an interview. “This new brand positioning is going to really identify and connect UniMás with the main mother ship brand of Univision.”

The rebranding of TeleFutura is just one of many Spanish-language television changes this year.

Many of the efforts may appear to be geared toward consumers, but they are also an attempt by the networks to attract dollars from advertisers wanting to cater to the growing Hispanic marketplace.

“Media companies are being forced to change because audience behavior is changing pretty radically,” said Karl Heiselman, the chief executive at Wolff Olins, the advertising agency that worked with Univision on a redesigh of its tulip logo, unveiled in October. “The Hispanic market is not the old stereotype of the past at all. It’s incredibly young and tech savvy.”

The Univision parent company presented a refreshed three-dimensional version of the green, blue, red and purple tulip logo, along with a new tag line “The Hispanic Heartbeat of America.”

“There was a huge opportunity for Univision to tell a more relevant contemporary story, not only to their audience but to a new audience and to their advertisers,” said Jordan Crane, a creative director at Wolff Olins. “When it was first done, the world was more flat. Now we have so many different platforms that this identity has to live on.”

In November, Univision announced a new logo for its Galavisión unit to celebrate that network’s 33rd anniversary. The new logo included a line underneath clearly identifying Galavisión as “A Univision Network” and connecting it further to the parent company. The new logo was designed by PMcD Design and featured an orange “G” and the tagline in gray.

At Advertising Week this fall, Telemundo announced a major rebranding effort of its own, including a new fire-red “T” logo that replaced its 11-year old blue “T” logo. The network, owned by NBCUniversal, will start the campaign this month with marketing initiatives including commercials featuring network personalities. The ads will run on networks like A&E, Bravo, CNBC, Lifetime and MTV. The network’s morning show, “Un Nuevo Dia,” will be live from Times Square on Dec. 10.

“It is the year of the brands in the Hispanic space,” said Jacqueline Hernández, the chief operating officer for Telemundo. “When you’re doing a brand refresh, your goal is to keep, maintain and attract.”

The new campaign, created by the DixonBaxi Creative Agency, features bold hues of yellow, purple, blue and red and centers on the Spanish word “te,” the informal pronoun for “you,” with phrases like “Te sorprende” and “Te informa” (It surprises you. It informs you).

But despite all of UniVision’s branding efforts, content is still king. And while Univision attracts a significant portion of domestic Spanish-language television viewers, TeleFutura will have some catching up to do if it expects to compete with Telemundo. According to data from Nielsen, from Sept. 24 through Nov. 25, Univision averaged 3.7 million viewers in prime time, Telemundo had 1.2 million viewers and TeleFutura had 710,000.

Univision hopes to counter that momentum by striking content partnerships that hit close to Telemundo’s turf, including a multiyear agreement with the Colombian production company Caracol Televisión, which at the end of this year will cease to offer Telemundo first right of refusal on content.

Univision will also benefit from a new content agreement with RTI Colombia, which distributes content through the Univision partner Televisa. Telemundo owns a 40 percent share in RTI, but new RTI shows including “Quien Eres Tú” (Who are you?) and “Made in Cartagena” will make their debut on UniMás. A third RTI dramatic series, a boxing-themed show called “Cloroformo,” is also part of the new production slate.

While the network is setting its sights on edgier, alternative content, many of the shows will still feature the essential ingredient in many Spanish-language series: romance.

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