Obama, Boehner zero in on a "fiscal cliff" deal President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner moved close to agreement Monday on a plan to avert the year-end "fiscal cliff," but they had yet to clear several critical hurdles, including winning the support of wary House Republicans. Obama and Boehner (R-Ohio) huddled at the White House for 45 minutes Monday morning for their third conversation in the past five days. Later, Boehner met for an hour at the Capitol with his leadership team in advance of a briefing Tuesday morning for the entire House GOP that could be a crucial test of Boehner's ability to sell the deal. Administration officials and aides to Boehner declined to comment publicly on the talks, but people in both parties said they continued to make progress. Obama laid out a counteroffer that reduces the amount of new taxes he is demanding to $1.2 trillion over the next decade and concedes a key Republican demand - applying a less-generous measure of inflation to several government programs, including Social Security. That change would save about $225 billion over the next decade, about two-thirds of it through smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries. Obama tentatively embraced the change in budget negotiations with Boehner in the summer of 2011. Since then, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and many other Democrats have rejected the proposal, insisting that the solvency of Social Security be addressed separately from the year-end negotiations. Still, senior Democratic aides said they could probably muster the votes for the change if it was not applied to disability payments, known as SSI, and if very old seniors were protected through a bump-up in benefits at age 85. Obama has also dropped his demand for the extension of a payroll tax holiday that has benefited virtually every worker for the past two years. But he is also seeking higher taxes on a larger swath of wealthy taxpayers than Boehner has accepted, $50 billion in new spending on infrastructure, an extension of emergency unemployment benefits, and a hike in the federal debt limit sufficient to delay any fight over the issue for two years. In his latest proposal, Boehner offered a one-year debt-limit increase. And Republicans have opposed more infrastructure spending and additional unemployment benefits. Negotiations ramp up Talks over the fiscal cliff have accelerated since Boehner made an offer Friday to increase tax rates on income over $1 million and to delay a fight over the government's borrowing limit for another year in exchange for significant cuts to health and retirement programs. Boehner's proposal called for $2 trillion in savings over the next decade, half from higher taxes and half from cuts to the fast-growing health and retirement programs that are the federal government's largest expense. People in both parties said the next few days could prove critical: Either Obama and Boehner would reach a consensus and sell it to their respective parties, or talks would collapse, leaving congressional leaders scrambling for a fall-back plan to mitigate the economic damage from more than $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to begin immediately after Dec. 31.