Republican lawmakers and President Barack Obama
exchanged offers Tuesday in a bid to reach agreement on averting the
fiscal cliff of budget cuts and tax increases, media reports said.
Speaker of the House John Boehner has sent a new proposal to Obama
to "achieve tax and entitlement reform to solve our looming debt
crisis and create more American jobs," a spokesman told the
Washington Post, but declined to provide details of the plan.
Obama had sent the Republicans a counteroffer Monday with 1.4
trillion dollars in new revenue over 10 years, but few savings
through social entitlement reforms, the newspaper Politico reported,
citing unnamed sources.
Harry Reid, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate,
indicated it will be difficult to achieve a deal before
Christmas: "We can do things very quickly. But this is not something
we can do easily. I think it's going to be extremely difficult to get
it done before Christmas, but it could be done."
The conservative opposition Republicans, who control the lower
House of Representatives, and Obama's left-leaning Democratics
continued to accuse each other Tuesday of holding up negotiations.
"We're still waiting for the White House to identify what spending
cuts the president is willing to make as part of the balanced
approach that he promised the American people," Boehner said in
Congress, just two days after meeting with Obama on Sunday at the
White House.
"Where are the president's spending cuts? And the longer the White
House slow-walks this process, the closer our economy gets to the
fiscal cliff."
White House spokesman Jay Carney refused to detail where talks
stood - saying his goal was to be "extremely opaque" - but said
Republicans were the ones failing to provide specific plans.
"There's no deal available that will see the tax cuts of the Bush
era for the wealthiest Americans extended, and it's simply not
acceptable to have a deal where there's - all these specific burdens
are placed on the middle class and seniors and others on the one
hand, and then there's some vague promise that tax reform will
produce savings from wealthy Americans sometime in the future,
without any specifics," Carney said.
"That can't be how it works."
The combined federal budget cuts and tax increases are projected
to take a bite of more than 600 billion dollars out of the economy in
2013 alone, which could throw the United States back into recession.
Across-the-board income tax increases account for the largest part
of the economic hit.
Obama has urged Congress to pass legislation freezing income tax
rates for the bottom 98 per cent of earners. He has vowed to block
any measure that prevents higher rates for households earning more
than 250,000 a year.
Republicans have argued that higher rates in any income bracket
would be damaging in a still-weak economy and have countered with
offers to reduce tax deductions, which disproportionately benefit the
wealthy, to raise similar revenues.
