President Barack Obama pushed back against Republican efforts tofocus on a scaled-down deficit deal, arguing for a broader packageof spending cuts and tax increases to put the U.S. on a sounderlong-term fiscal footing.

“Now is the time to deal with these issues,” Obama said at aWhite House news conference yesterday before resuming talks withcongressional leaders on reducing deficits and raising the $14.3trillion U.S. debt ceiling before the government exhausts itsborrowing authority on Aug. 2. “If not now, when?”

In the negotiating session, Obama rejected a Republicanpresentation on spending cuts discussed in earlier talks led byVice President Joe Biden, a Democratic official said. Obama saidthe total — which a Democratic official put at $1.7 trillion — fellshort of his $4 trillion goal and the threshold Republicans set fora debt-limit increase large enough to carry the nation through the2012 elections, another Democrat said.