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.
“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.
On a gloomy day at the Capitol, that passed for good news.
It is a time-honored congressional tradition that any deal must be preceded by hours of doomsaying and pessimism. It’s easier to sell a deal, of course, if you’ve first conditioned your colleagues and the public to fear there will be no deal at all.
On the Hill on Sunday, even lawmakers seemed confused about whether what they were seeing was the usual late-stage political theater — or evidence that, this time, there really would be no deal.
“The two parties are so close that they can’t afford to walk away,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb), calling the fits and starts of this weekend “just normal” posturing in high-level negotiations. “I continue to be optimistic.”
But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) seemed to have the opposite impression.
“I’m incredibly disappointed we cannot seem to find common ground. I think we’re going over the cliff,” he wrote on Twitter.
Previously, it had been assumed that the most difficult part of any resolution 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.
Senate negotiators search for deal to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’
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Senate negotiators search for deal to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’
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