The Hill News

President Obama previewed on Friday the long conversation he plans next year on government spending and tax reform.

The president said that he hoped to open a far-reaching debate on tax and spending issues, coming on the heels the recommendations earlier this month by his fiscal commission.

"What I believe is, is that we've got to start that conversation next year," Obama said of possible tax reform during an interview on NPR. "I think we can get some broad bipartisan agreement that it needs to be done. But it's going to require a lot of hard work to actually make it happen."

The New York Times reported on Friday that the White House is eyeing a long-term overhaul of the tax code over the next two years that would look to cut individual and corporate tax rates while also eliminating deductions and loopholes in order to raise revenues.

The Times reported that the administration is tentatively studying different options for tax reform, deliberations that Obama acknowledged on Friday were "complicated."

But the issue could also provide an opportunity for the White House to work with the resurgent GOP lawmakers in Congress next year, as well as a chance to defray a politically thorny issue -- the ultimate fate of the Bush-era tax cuts -- before Obama's 2012 reelection effort gets underway in earnest.

The talks on tax reform and spending cuts appear to have been spurred by the report by Obama's fiscal commission earlier this month, which called for a series of cuts and entitlement reforms i! n combination with tax reforms to address the long-term defici! t.

"I have not specifically endorsed that plan," Obama pointedly noted of the commission's final report, which won the support of 11 of 18 of the members of the commission -- short of the 14 votes needed to force a vote on the plan in Congress.

Nonetheless, Obama said that a national discussion on spending cuts would accompany any bid for tax reform in the coming year.

"We've got to look at a whole range of things â€" where the money goes," the president explained. "And that includes entitlements; that includes defense; that includes a whole host of discretionary spending where we can probably do more and do it smarter with less money, if we are actually making some tough choices."