WASH­ING­TON-CEOs from more than 80 ma­jor US com­pa­nies are press­ing Con­gress to re­duce the fed­er­al deficit by rais­ing tax­es and cut­ting spend­ing. The deficit and how to tame it has be­come a key theme in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. They warned in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day that the un­cer­tain­ty spawned by the deficit, which has topped US$1 tril­lion for four con­sec­u­tive years, is damp­en­ing busi­ness­es' hir­ing and in­vest­ment and sti­fling the frag­ile eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

The CEOs said the so­lu­tion re­quires a com­bi­na­tion of high­er tax­es and re­duced gov­ern­ment spend­ing in­clud­ing on en­ti­tle­ment pro­grams such as Medicare and Med­ic­aid. They al­so seek fed­er­al in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture and math and sci­ence ed­u­ca­tion. "What it re­al­ly comes down to is if we still have the po­lit­i­cal will to be a great coun­try," Dave Cote, chair­man and CEO of Hon­ey­well In­ter­na­tion­al Inc., said in a state­ment.

The CEOs head a di­verse ar­ray of cor­po­ra­tions, in­clud­ing Aet­na Inc, Mi­crosoft Corp, JP­Mor­gan Chase & Co, Time Warn­er Ca­ble Inc, Mer­ck & Co Inc, Gen­er­al Elec­tric Co, Dow Chem­i­cal Co, Ver­i­zon Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc, Bank of Amer­i­ca Corp, AT&T Inc and All­state Corp.

The group en­dors­es the pro­pos­als of a spe­cial bi­par­ti­san com­mis­sion that called for about US$3 in spend­ing cuts for every US$1 in tax in­creas­es to save around US$4 tril­lion. Re­pub­li­can politi­cians and law­mak­ers have vig­or­ous­ly op­posed tax in­creas­es. Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney would low­er deficits most­ly through deep spend­ing cuts and elim­i­nat­ing un­spec­i­fied tax de­duc­tions. He al­so wants to low­er the top tax rates on cor­po­ra­tions and in­di­vid­u­als.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has pro­posed re­duc­ing the deficit by slow­ing spend­ing grad­u­al­ly, to avoid sud­den­ly tip­ping the econ­o­my back in­to re­ces­sion. He would raise tax­es on house­holds earn­ing more than US$250,000 and im­pose a sur­charge of 30 per­cent on those mak­ing more than US$1 mil­lion.

The deficit, the short­fall cre­at­ed when the gov­ern­ment spends more in a year than it col­lects, cur­rent­ly has the gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing about 31 cents for every dol­lar it spends. A year-end dead­line looms for Con­gress and the White House to work out a deal on the deficit.

Oth­er­wise across-the-board spend­ing cuts and tax in­creas­es will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly kick in, slic­ing about US$100 bil­lion from fed­er­al bud­gets and rais­ing tax­es by US$400 bil­lion as the na­tion goes over the so-called "fis­cal cliff" in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.