White House officials have quietly lobbied Wall Street and thebusiness community over the last several months to supportPresident Barack Obama's plan to impose higher taxes on the wealthyto cut the deficit and avert going over the fiscal cliff.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Jeff Zients, actingdirector of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as Chiefof Staff Jack Lew and National Economic Council Director GeneSperling were key administration officials dispatched before theelection to meet with top business and finance leaders, accordingto people familiar with the meetings.

With corporate executives among those expressing concern thatthe $607 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts knownas the fiscal cliff risks tipping the economy into anotherrecession, the administration has been working to enlist theirsupport before negotiations with Congress begin.

Tomorrow will provide the first test of whether that effort isbearing fruit. That's when the president meets at the White Housewith the heads of some of the biggest U.S. companies, includingGeneral Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt, FordMotor Co. CEO Alan Mulally, Honeywell International Inc. CEO DavidCote, and American Express Co. CEO Kenneth I. Chenault. He'll alsohold his first news conference since winning a second term on Nov.6.

“Now that the election is out of the way, people will feel thatit's easier to get down to the specific plan for how to approachthis,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New YorkCity, an association of corporate chief executives. “There will bea lot of support for the president because his leadership is theonly way that this is going to get done.”

Obama is counting on the executives to help put pressure onlawmakers to reach a deal before the start of the new year, whenthe higher taxes and lowered federal spending are scheduled to kickin. He is also meeting with labor leaders today at the WhiteHouse.

Both sessions precede Obama's opening talks on the fiscal cliffon Nov. 16 with the top two congressional Republicans, HouseSpeaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, aswell as Democrats Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, andRepresentative Nancy Pelosi.

Administration officials contacted by phone and e-mail yesterdaydeclined to comment for this story.

Economic Uncertainty

While members of the business community stayed on the sidelinesduring the failed debt negotiations last year between Obama andRepublican leaders in Congress, they now are pressing to ease theeconomic uncertainty caused by the prospect of another politicaldeadlock over taxes and spending.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 3.4 percent in thethree days after the Nov. 6 election, and investors retreating fromrisk pushed the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury to 1.61percent from 1.75 percent. The S&P closed up less than 0.1percent at 1,380 at 4 p.m. yesterday in New York. U.S. bond marketswere closed for the Veterans Day holiday.

Amid Obama's fight for re-election against Republican challengerMitt Romney, his aides were waging a separate campaign. ThePartnership for New York City, a nonpartisan organization for NewYork-based corporations, has emerged as a central avenue for theadministration's business outreach.

As recently as September, Zients met with executive members ofthe Partnership at a lunchtime event hosted by Mark Gallogly,managing principal of Centerbridge Capital Partners LLC and anObama donor, according to people present, who asked for anonymityto discuss the closed meeting.

Among the roughly 30 people who attended the meeting were DonaldMarron, chairman of Lightyear Capital LLC; Douglas Peterson,President of Standard & Poors; Mark Wagar, CEO of Empire BlueCross & Blue Shield; and Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of SilverLake Management LLC.

Zients came armed with a 40-minute Power Point presentation thatlaid out the issues and the math, according to the people. It alsohighlighted Obama's economic agenda and how his policies havehelped business.

The budget chief outlined the most discussed solutions: thepresident's proposal; the recommendations from the co-chairmen ofObama's deficit commission, former Republican Senator Alan Simpsonand Erskine Bowles, onetime chief of staff to former President BillClinton; as well as the Republican budget crafted by Republicanvice presidential nominee, Representative Paul Ryan and backed byBoehner, according to the people.

Lew and Geithner

Sperling in May attended a roundtable hosted by BlackRock Inc.CEO Laurence D. Fink and other executives at the asset managementcompany's New York headquarters. Lew, who has been a leadnegotiator in deficit talks with Congress, held similar sessionsearlier in the year.

Geithner has met with business leaders in Washington and in NewYork. Last month, he had dinner at the Treasury Department withJohn Paulson, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Paulson &Co.; Thomas Steyer, senior managing member of Farallon CapitalManagement LLC; as well as Marron and Hutchins.

The administration's approach — that any plan to cut the deficitmust include more tax revenue as well as spending cuts – - isfinding a receptive audience on Wall Street, as it did with voterson Nov. 6.

“No one is so unpatriotic that they wouldn't pay a little bitmore to resolve” the nation's debt crisis, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein said Oct. 11 in an interview on CNBC. Headded that no one would be willing to pay higher taxes unless theywere sure it was part of a comprehensive solution to the country'sbudget woes.

Obama and Boehner laid down their markers last week. Obama onNov. 9 reiterated his call for Congress to pass an immediateextension of existing tax rates for middle-income Americans and tolet rates rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individuals withincome about $200,000 annually and married couples earning morethan $250,000. That same day, Boehner, an Ohio Republican, citedpublic support for the re-elected House Republican majority andsaid tax rates must not go up.

Still, both left open the possibility of agreement on raisingrevenue from top earners by limiting tax breaks. Such an approach,which neither has explicitly proposed, would let Obama claim thehigher tax payments he seeks from the wealthy and allow Boehner toavoid the higher rates he calls unacceptable. Both also supportedsimplifying the tax code.

Cote, who was a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission, saidlast week he was encouraged by signs that both sides are suggestingthey're open to negotiations.

'Fixin' It'

“This is something that will get solved and will get solved withtaxes going up and with spending being cut,” Cote said in aninterview with Bloomberg News. “It's all a question if we do it nowthoughtfully and proactively or do we wait until markets force usto do it, in which case we're in a much more dire situation.”

Cote is also on the CEO council of the Campaign to Fix the Debt,which was founded by Simpson and Bowles. The group has raisedalmost $40 million and is beginning an advertising campaign thisweek that plays off of well-known ads from Nike Inc. and McDonaldsCorp. with the slogans “Just Fix It” and “I'm Fixin' It.”

Other business leaders scheduled to attend tomorrow's WhiteHouse meeting include Aetna Inc. CEO Mark Bertolini; Xerox Corp.CEO Ursula Burns; Dow Chemical Co. CEO Andrew Liveris; Procter& Gamble Co. CEO Bob McDonald; PepsiCo Inc. CEO Indra Nooyi;International Business Machines Corp. CEO Ginni Rometty; Wal-MartStores Inc. CEO Mike Duke; and Chevron Corp. CEO John Watson.

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