Wall Street closes high as Obama makes spending cut offer

Wall Street's major benchmarks closed on a high note yesterday (February 5th), after Barack Obama made a short-term spending cut offer to Congress.

The president is asking his fellow lawmakers to come up with tens of billions of dollars in savings and tax revenue in order to delay automatic spending cuts scheduled to come into play on March 1st.

Obama stated that the proposals he offered House of Representatives speaker John Boehner in December during their fiscal cliff debate are still on the negotiating table.

"If [Congress] can't get a bigger package done by the time the sequester is scheduled to go into effect, then I believe they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms," the president stated.

At close of play on Wall Street yesterday evening, the Dow Jones was up by 0.7 per cent – or 99.2 points – to an index value of 13979.3 points, while the Nasdaq jumped by 1.2 per cent – or 40.41 points – to 3171.5 points.

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