Obama and GOP leaders again vow to ‘work together,’ but admit it won’t be easy

Emerging from their first sit-down since Election Day, President Obama and GOP leaders called their White House meeting "productive" and reiterated promises to "work together" on behalf of the American people.

But even as Obama heralded the get-together as a "good start," both sides acknowledged that the true test of bipartisanship lies ahead, as Democrats and Republicans remain strongly divided on issues like an extension of the so-called Bush tax cuts. Obama said that this would be the first of several meetings with him and leadership, including a Camp David retreat.

"None of this is going to be easy," Obama told reporters afterward. "Although the atmosphere in the meeting was extremely civil … there's always going to be political incentive to work against each other, particularly in the current hyper-partisan climate."

In a separate news conference on Capitol Hill after the meeting, incoming House Speaker John Boehner echoed Obama's comments. "We had a very nice meeting today. The question is: Can we find the common ground that the American people expect us to find?"

The meeting, planned to last an hour, ran for nearly two hours. GOP leaders said Obama privately acknowledged that in the most recent Congress he had not reached out to Republicans as much as he should have -- a point he has also made in public interviews. He pledged to work more closely with the opposing party, they said.

"I think spending more time [together] will help us find some common ground," Boehner said.

Both Boehner and Obama, pointing to vast political differences between Democrats and Republicans, said compromise won't be easy. But both sides agree that gridlock in Washington is not helpful to either party, they said.

"Americans did not vote for gridlock, and they will hold all of us — and I mean all of us — accountable for it," Obama said.

In perhaps the only real significant development of the meeting, Obama announced that he had assigned his budget director, Jack Lew, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to begin negotiating with Republicans on an extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Yet Obama did not signal any change in his position on the issue: He wants to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, whereas Republicans want to make the tax cuts permanent even for the wealthiest Americans.

Even with all the nice talk, there were hints that relations between the GOP and the White House haven't completely lost their edge. Asked whether the GOP would dial down its rhetoric against Obama, the Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, dodged the question.

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Obama told reporters he believes the sit-down will "yield results."

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