President Obama opened last-ditch talks Friday with congressional leaders on a plan to avert the worst effects of the year-end “fiscal cliff,” seeking agreement on a stopgap proposal that would prevent income taxes from rising on the vast majority of Americans.
Obama summoned the four senior lawmakers — Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — to an Oval Office meeting at 3 p.m. EST in an effort to hammer out a deal that would also protect unemployed workers and the fragile U.S. recovery from severe austerity measures set to hit in just four days. Vice President Biden is also attending the talks.
Congressional aides cautioned that quick action would require leaders in both chambers to rally firmly around a specific set of proposals.
One option that could potentially win broad support, Republican aides said, was allowing taxes to rise on household income over $400,000 a year — Obama’s latest offer in negotiations with Boehner — rather than the lower threshold of $250,000 a year, as Obama proposed during the presidential campaign.
Also reported to be up for discussion were proposals to extend unemployment insurance benefits scheduled to expire at year-end, prevent a cut in doctors’ Medicare reimbursements and put off some of the federal spending cuts slated to take effect in the new year, notably those affecting defense.
Ahead of the White House session, the first such negotiations since mid-November, lawmakers sent mixed signals about the prospects of a deal that would at least blunt the impact of the large tax-rate increases and spending cuts due to be implemented automatically on Jan. 1.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday morning on NBC that he was “getting a little more optimistic today” and that “the odds are better than people think.”
“Sometimes it’s darkest before the dawn,” he said. He pointed to what he called “two good signs for optimism” — the active engagement of McConnell in talks with the White House for the first time and Boehner’s decision Thursday to call House members back on Sunday.
But Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) voiced skepticism, telling CBS that the afternoon meeting at the White House “feels too much to me like optics to make it look like we’re doing something.” He added: “This is a total dereliction of duty at every level. I’ve been very surprised that the president has not laid out a very specific plan to deal with this, but candidly Congress could have done the same, and I think the American people should be disgusted.”
Reflecting that sense of gloom, U.S. stocks fell for a fifth straight day at Friday’s open, the longest losing streak since September. The Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were all down in early trading.
For his part, McConnell signaled interest Thursday in cutting a deal.
“The truth is, we’re coming up against a hard deadline here . . . and Republicans aren’t about to write a blank check for anything Senate Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff,” McConnell said in a speech Thursday afternoon on the Senate floor.
Obama, Biden host top lawmakers in last-ditch ‘fiscal cliff’ talks
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Obama, Biden host top lawmakers in last-ditch ‘fiscal cliff’ talks
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