Video: US Senate leader: it looks like we're heading over the 'fiscal cliff' "That looks like where we're headed," said Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Democrat-controlled US Senate, launching a bitter attack on the leadership of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives which he blamed for the failure to clinch a deal. He chastised John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, for failing to call his members back to work. Winter snow storms forecast for the weekend now threaten to enmesh any attempt to reconvene the House into widely predicted travel chaos. In a bid to give the broken-down process fresh impetus, Mr Obama cut short his traditional Hawaiian holiday and returned to the White House yesterday in move calculated to show his own willingness to negotiate a last-minute deal if Congress was able to find common ground. But as Mr Obama touched down, there were few signs of progress in negotiations to avert a crisis that economists warn could throw the US back into recession as some $680bn in tax raises and spending cuts bite after the December 31 deadline expires. Hopes that Barack Obama's re-election last November might clear the way for a bipartisan deal to rein in America's spiraling deficits now appear to have been too optimistic.