Still no deal.
There were signs of renewed effort in the talks to resolve the “fiscal cliff” crisis late Sunday afternoon. For one thing, direct talks had begun between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Vice President Biden. Republicans exiting a mid-afternoon caucus meeting said that McConnell had excused himself to take a call from the vice president.
Those two Washington veterans have become the capital’s unofficial closers, hammering out the agreement that resolved a fight over tax cuts in late 2010, and the debt-ceiling crisis in August 2011.
But their task could could prove far more difficult this time around.
Less than 36 hours remain before a package of painful tax increases and spending cuts start to kick in. Even if a deal is struck, it will have to be passed by both the Democratic-controlled Senate and then the GOP-held House — running the gantlet of a gridlocked Washington on New Year’s Eve.
A few minutes before 6 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that negotiations were still going on. On a gloomy day at the Capitol, that passed for good news.
“There’s still time left to reach an agreement, and we intend to continue negotiations,” Reid said on the Senate floor. He added, however, that there would be no Senate votes — on a fiscal cliff deal or anything else — on Sunday night. The chamber will be back in session at 11 a.m. Monday.
Previously, it had been assumed that the more difficult task would be gathering Republican votes, given the House’s rebellious GOP caucus. But earlier Sunday, it appeared that Democrats, instead, were the ones standing in the way: Reid said in the afternoon that Democrats were unwilling to respond to an offer that McConnell had delivered to Reid’s office Saturday evening — nearly 19 hours earlier.
“I have had a number of conversations with the president, and at this stage we’re not able to make a counter-offer,” Reid said, adding of McConnell’s talks with Biden: “I wish them well.”
Senior Republican aides said McConnell turned to Biden after it became apparent that aides to Reid were slow-walking the negotiations.
One sign of potential progress came late Sunday, when Republicans appeared to have dropped a key demand that had stalled the negotiations earlier in the day: that Democrats agree to a cost-saving, but politically sensitive, reduction in Social Security benefits. The demand, called “chained CPI,” would effectively reduce the cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits over time.
Previously, the GOP had demanded it in exchange for President Obama’s request to extend emergency unemployment benefits and cancel deep cuts to the Pentagon and other agency budgets. A Democratic aide close to the talks described the request as a “poison pill.”
But, late Sunday, one GOP leader said it had been a demand that the GOP had expected to withdraw. A bargaining chip, which they had now given away.
“I don’t think anybody ever expected Social Security to be a part of this,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said after leaving the meeting with McConnell. He said McConnell’s aides included it in their offers as a standard negotiating tactic — “start big and get skinny,” he called it. Cornyn said it had always been something that Republicans expected Democrats to object to, and that it would be removed from GOP follow-up offers.
Senate negotiators search for deal to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’
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Senate negotiators search for deal to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’
