CRITICIZED AS WEAK IN PAST TALKS, OBAMA TAKES HARDER LINE

[His approach is born of painful experience. In his first four years in office, Mr. Obama has repeatedly offered what he considered compromises on stimulus spending, health care and deficit reduction to Republicans, who either rejected them as inadequate or pocketed them and insisted on more. Republicans argued that Mr. Obama never made serious efforts at compromise and instead lectured them about what they ought to want rather than listening to what they did want.]

By Peter Baker

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Disciplined and unyielding, Mr. Obama argues for raising taxes on the wealthy while

offering nothing new to rein in spending and overhaul entitlement programs  

beyond what was on the table last year.

WASHINGTON — Amid demands from Republicans that President Obama propose detailed new spending cuts to avert the year-end fiscal crisis, his answer boils down to this: you first. 

Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table. 

Disciplined and unyielding, he argues for raising taxes on the wealthy while offering nothing new to rein in spending and overhaul entitlement programs beyond what was on the table last year. Until Republicans offer their own new plan, Mr. Obama will not alter his. In effect, he is trying to leverage what he claims as an election mandate to force Republicans to take ownership of the difficult choices ahead. 

His approach is born of painful experience. In his first four years in office, Mr. Obama has repeatedly offered what he considered compromises on stimulus spending, health care and deficit reduction to Republicans, who either rejected them as inadequate or pocketed them and insisted on more. Republicans argued that Mr. Obama never made serious efforts at compromise and instead lectured them about what they ought to want rather than listening to what they did want. 

Either way, the two sides were left at loggerheads over the weekend with less than a month until a series of painful tax increases and spending cuts automatically take effect, risking what economists say would be a new recession. 

Mr. Obama refuses to propose more spending cuts until Republicans accept higher tax rates on the wealthy, and Republicans refuse to accept higher tax rates on the wealthy while asking for more spending cuts. 

“I’m puzzled why Republicans are locking into a principle that’s not sustainable and why Democrats aren’t taking the moment to put forward their own vision of entitlement reform,” said Peter R. Orszag, a former White House budget director for Mr. Obama. 

Mr. Orszag’s former White House colleagues said they had grown tired of making unilateral concessions only to see Republicans moving the goal posts, as they see it. “The president is not going to negotiate with himself,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “He’s laid out his position, and Republicans have to come to the table.” 

Republican strategists argue that in resorting to campaign-style events to take his fiscal message to voters, Mr. Obama is overplaying his hand, much as President George W. Bush did after his re-election when he barnstormed the country in favor of a Social Security restructuring plan that he never successfully sold to leaders on Capitol Hill. 

“He is overreading his mandate,” said John Feehery, a former adviser to top House Republicans. “By doing the campaign thing, he is making the same mistake Bush made in 2005.” Eventually, he said, Democratic and Republican leaders “are going to cut the deal, and Obama is going to be on the outside looking in.” 

The difference might be that Mr. Obama ran more explicitly on the idea of letting Mr. Bush’s tax cuts expire for incomes over $250,000, while Mr. Bush’s re-election was fought more on grounds of national security than Social Security. But both presidents emerged from relatively narrow popular-vote victories determined to impose their will on a balky Congress resisting their leadership. 

Mr. Obama seemed to defy the Republican House last week when Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner delivered a plan calling for $1.6 trillion in additional taxes from the wealthy over 10 years, as well as $50 billion in short-term stimulus spending and $612 billion in recycled cuts first put on the table during last year’s failed debt talks. 

Republicans erupted in outrage, though they produced no specific alternative. Instead, they noted they had expressed newfound willingness since the election to increase tax revenue by limiting deductions for the wealthy, though not by raising rates. 

The administration laid out its latest plan in less formal ways a couple of weeks earlier, according to a senior official who declined to be identified discussing private deliberations. But the message was that Speaker John A. Boehner could not move yet. After waiting with no further response, the administration decided to have Mr. Geithner deliver the proposal on paper knowing it would be provocative but thinking it was needed to move the process along. 

Instead, the process has collapsed, at least for now. The depth of disagreement played out on the Sunday morning talk shows, even as Mr. Obama went golfing with former President Bill Clinton in a session that White House officials presumed would include trading notes about the fiscal crisis. 

“We’ve put a serious offer on the table by putting revenues up there to try to get this question resolved,” Mr. Boehner said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But the White House has responded with virtually nothing. They have actually asked for more revenue than they’ve been asking for the whole entire time.” 

Mr. Geithner said it was up to Republicans to outline more spending cuts than Mr. Obama had previously put on the table. “Some Republicans apparently want to go beyond that, but what they have to do is tell us what they’re prepared to do,” Mr. Geithner told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And what we can’t do, Bob, is sit here trying to guess what works for them.” 

That represents something of a shift for Mr. Obama, who did try to guess what worked for Republicans in his first term. When he crafted a stimulus spending program to bolster the economy shortly after taking office, Mr. Obama devoted roughly a third of the money to tax cuts that he assumed Republicans would like. They did not. Likewise, his framework for universal health care included free-market elements that he thought Republicans would embrace. They did not. 

While Republicans argued that the overall programs overshadowed any palatable aspects, Mr. Obama came to believe he had made a mistake in offering concessions up front. In an interview in September 2010, he said he had learned “that if you already have a third of the package as tax cuts, then the Republicans, who traditionally are more comfortable with tax cuts, may just pocket that and attack the other components of the program.” 

Aides said Mr. Obama came to the same conclusion after his clash with Republicans over raising the nation’s borrowing limit last year. “We put all these things on the table, and the reason we couldn’t do a deal is because Republicans couldn’t do revenues,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “So our view here is the president won’t sign a deal that doesn’t have higher rates for the wealthy. Until they cross that bridge, nothing else is relevant.” 

Yet there is risk in that. Republicans now understand that higher tax rates on the wealthy is Mr. Obama’s No. 1 priority, so rather than give in, some strategists say they should hold out to leverage those to shape other aspects of a final deal. 

“He only cares about one detail: raising rates on the top two brackets,” said Tony Fratto, a former White House and Treasury Department official under Mr. Bush. “Everything else is secondary. That’s why if that is going to happen, it will be last if Republicans can hold out. I think it’s pretty clear Obama will sacrifice just about anything to get that. It’s the only win for him.” 

@ The New York Times

MALAYSIA URGED TOPROTECT DOMESTIC WORKERS 

[Yusnida, an Indonesian woman, said that the agency had taken her and other women to work as maids in different homes each day from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to a report in The Star, a Malaysian newspaper. “My hands and legs were swollen from the long hours of work every day,” she was quoted as saying. “The agent only provided us with two meals a day. There was not enough food, and the workload was heavy.”]

By Liz Gooch

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia must punish the recruitment agents accused of forcing more than 100 foreign women to work as domestic help without pay and enforce laws to protect migrant workers, the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and a migrant workers’ support group said on Monday. 

Malaysian immigration officers on Saturday rescued 105 women, mostly Indonesians, who said they had been forced to work as domestic helpers and at food stalls, been given little food and been confined to a four-story building at night in the port town of Klang, near Kuala Lumpur. 

“A few of them said they had been beaten by the supervisors,” said Chandran Muniandy, the assistant deputy director of immigration in Klang. “They locked them up. They couldn’t go anywhere.” 

Some of the women in the group, which included 95 Indonesians, 6 Filipinos and 4 Cambodians, said that they had been forced to work for up to six months and had not been paid, Mr. Chandran added. 

Twelve people who worked for the agency, including Malaysians and foreigners, have been arrested under Malaysia’s antitrafficking laws, Mr. Chandran said, adding that he expected to make more arrests. 

The case is the latest in a series of episodes involving Indonesian domestic workers that have at times strained diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Malaysia. Last month, two Indonesian domestic workers reported that they had been raped. One alleged that she had been raped by three police officers, while the other woman said her employer had raped her. 

In December 2011, Indonesia lifted a ban in place since 2009 that had prevented women from coming to Malaysia to work as domestic helpers. 

“We will send a diplomatic note to the Malaysian government asking for tough punishment against them,” said Suryana Sastradiredja, a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy, referring to those alleged to be the perpetrators in the Klang case. 

Yusnida, an Indonesian woman, said that the agency had taken her and other women to work as maids in different homes each day from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to a report in The Star, a Malaysian newspaper. “My hands and legs were swollen from the long hours of work every day,” she was quoted as saying. “The agent only provided us with two meals a day. There was not enough food, and the workload was heavy.” 

The agency told her that she could leave only once she had paid the agency a fee for bringing her to Malaysia, according to the report. 

Mr. Suryana, of the Indonesian Embassy, urged the Malaysian authorities to take swift action against those who committed crimes against domestic workers. 

He expressed anger that the three police officers charged with the rape of the Indonesian worker last month had been released on bail. 

“I’m very, very angry with the situation,” he said. “If one Indonesian commits a crime, the Malaysian government is very quick to react, but a crime involving Malaysians, they are very slow.” 

Irene Fernandez, the executive director of Tenaganita, an advocacy group for migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur, said the Malaysian authorities needed to provide better protection for domestic helpers and more effectively prosecute unscrupulous agents who abuse workers. 

“A lot of homes are looking for part-time workers and cleaners, and so they are using that now and providing this form of labor where the workers are in a slavery-like situation,” she said, adding that women were often lured to Malaysia by agents who promised them factory jobs, only to find themselves forced to work as domestic helpers after their arrival. 

@ The New York Times