President Obama on Monday previewed his long-anticipated meeting with congressional leaders by signaling that he intends to address what he called "our two most fundamental challenges"-national security and economic growth.

"And it's in that spirit that I look forward to sitting down tomorrow and talking about urgent matters like the ratification of the New START treaty, which is so essential to our safety and security, and the status of the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year," Obama said of the meeting that is slated for late Tuesday morning and will be attended by eight top legislators, Vice President Biden, and two other administration officials.

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be the Republican headliners for the meeting, which was rescheduled from its previous date at GOP leaders' request.

Neither the White House nor Republican congressional leaders have signaled that they expect to achieve an immediate consensus on either the nuclear arms treaty with Russia or the tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year. The talks are planned to last just one hour.

But Tuesday's meeting will nonetheless be seen as a key indicator of the new tone Congress begins its lame-duck session before Republicans take control of the House in January.

"This is a challenge that both parties have a responsibility to address-to get federal spending under control and bring down the deficits that have been growing for most of the last decade," Obama said. "I'm going to be interested in hearing ideas from my Republican colleagues, as well as Democrats, about how we continue to grow the economy and how we put people back to work."

Obama appears to face significant obstacles in enticing Republicans to move toward his side on either New START or the tax cuts.

On Sunday, Republican Senate Minority Whip John Kyl of Arizona - the Republicans' point person on START who is also slated to attend Tuesday's meeting - continued to signal an unwillingness to address the topic during the lame-duck session, in spite of the White House's argument that immediate ratification is critical to national security, since Russian nuclear sites are currently unmonitored.

Appearing on "Meet The Press," Kyl said that he saw "no chance" that the Senate would ratify New START before the 112th Congress is seated.

"It's more a view of reality than policy," Kyl said, alluding to the Senate's compressed schedule and limited opportunity for debate during the lame-duck session.

But the White House continued to show no sign of backing down on getting the treaty ratified before Republicans increase their presence in the Senate in January, indicating an immediate flashpoint to the impending bipartisan talks.

In addition to arguing the pressing national security reasons for quick ratification of New Start, the Obama administration has cited the tradition of bipartisan support for arms control agreements as well as the backing the treaty has received from prominent members of the conservative foreign policy establishment.

"We've had 18 hearings in the Senate on START," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "This was a treaty that was agreed to in April and there have been countless briefings up on Capitol Hill about where we stand on this. We're happy to dedicate the serious and requisite amount of time to debate this and to have it voted on."

On the issue of taxes, which figures to be an even more politically consequential matter, Obama has called for eliminating the Bush-era cuts for the wealthy, while newly emboldened Republicans continue to insist that the tax cuts be extended for everyone.

Gibbs warned it was unlikely that the taxes issue would be resolved by the end of the week but said that there was a "unified position among most Democrats" that the government could not afford to becoming further indebted to extend tax cuts for individuals who make more than $200,000 and couples whose combined income tops $250,000 a year.

Still, the White House and some congressional Republicans have shown signs that there may be room to compromise by expanding the tax cuts for everyone for a period of two or three years.

Gibbs added an optimistic note on the potential to change the tone in Washington - a promise that Obama made a focal point of his 2008 campaign - after two years of extreme partisanship when the president received almost no Republican support on his major initiatives.

"I think this is the beginning of a new relationship with leaders in the House and the Senate," Gibbs said. "I think this is the beginning of a longer-term conversation about how we get to compromises on issues that we know are important for the American people."