Republican speaker demands detail budget cuts John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, has demanded the White House provide more detailed plans for spending cuts in talks to avert the fiscal cliff, amid no clear signs that a deal can be reached by the end of the month. Mr Boehner, in his first remarks since meeting Mr Obama at the White House at the weekend, said Tuesday that he remained "hopeful" of an agreement. But he accused the White House of "slow-walking this process" in terms of proposing specific reductions. "Where are the president's spending cuts?," Mr Boehner asked as he delivered a statement on the House floor. We know that the president wants more stimulus spending and an increase in the debt limit without any cuts or reforms. That's not fixing our problem. Frankly, it's making it worse. The remarks offer evidence that there remains a significant gap between Republicans and the White House with little time to spare to reach a deal. If no agreement is reached by January 1, the US economy will be hit by $600bn in annual spending cuts and tax increases, enough to send it back into recession next year. Mr Obama's chief demand is for Republicans to accept a rise in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. Mr Boehner has continued to oppose that even though other Republicans have broken ranks and suggested their party should reconsider. On Tuesday, Mr Boehner said that even if Mr Obama's wishes were granted on higher tax rates for the rich, the US would "see red ink for as far as the eye can see" and the economy would be damaged. Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, criticised Mr Boehner's remarks in a Twitter message: "The irony of this is that the White House offer had very specific cuts, the GOP counter offer had almost none." Both Mr Obama and Mr Boehner have been publicly vague about what kind of specific spending cuts they would accept in any deal. The White House budget proposal lays out a series of cuts to health programmes that could be accepted in any agreement - as does the House Republican budget. But Mr Obama and House Republicans have shied away from detailing precisely which of their proposals, particularly to trim the cost of Medicare, the health plan for seniors, they would put on the table now. One exception is that the Republican counter-offer included $200bn in savings from adopting a less generous measure of inflation, which would cut Social Security pension benefits.