Obama said he was willing to consider future deficit cuts, but only if they are done independently from a vote to raise the $16.4 trillion debt limit.
In a blunt rebuttal to Republicans who say they will not agree to any more tax increases, the president said taxes and spending both must be on the table.
He said he is "open to making modest adjustments to programs like Medicare to protect them for future generations," and wants to close tax loopholes at the same time.
Obama spoke less than a week before his inauguration for a second term, and several days after he signed legislation that narrowly averted a "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and across-the-board tax increases.
Combined with other bills he signed earlier in the term, he said he and Congress have reduced deficits by about $2.5 trillion over a decade, somewhat less than the $4 trillion he said is necessary to get them down to a manageable size.
"I'm happy to have a conversation about how we reduce our deficits in a sensible way," he said, but added repeatedly he wasn't willing to let congressional Republicans use the debt limit as leverage in negotiations over spending cuts.
Failure to raise the debt limit would put the United States into a first-ever default, a step that Obama said could "blow up the economy."
Congressional Democrats have recently urged the president to lift the debt limit unilaterally. He said — as he has before — that he won't do it, that Congress had voted for the spending that resulted in federal borrowing, and should now agree to pay the bill.
When it came to gun legislation, the president sought to reassure sportsmen and hunters that they have nothing for worry about.
"The issue here is not whether or not we believe in the 2nd Amendment. The issue is whether there are sensible steps we can take so that the individual in Newtown can't walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion. Certainly we can do something about that," he said.
Short of legislation, the president said there were administrative actions he could take. Asked to provide an example, he said, "How we are gathering data, for example, on guns that fall into the hands of criminals and how we track that more effectively."
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