6 years ago 
 
 (CNN) – Republican lawmakers said Sunday they believe President Barack Obama wants the country to fall off the fiscal cliff for political purposes. 
 
 “I think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff. He gets all this additional tax revenue for new programs. He gets to cut the military, which Democrats have been calling for for years and he gets to blame Republicans for it,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said on “Fox News Sunday.” 
 
 
 
 His sentiment was shared by Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina. 
 
 “I believed from the very beginning and continue to believe that the president has no interest at all in not going over the cliff,” Mulvaney told CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” “He wants to go over the cliff. Everything I've looked at and seen out of the White House.” 
 
 It’s a point Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, took issue with on Fox. 
 
 “This conversation to me is exactly what’s wrong in Washington,” Conrad countered. “It’s he said, she said, blame the other guy.” 
 
 But it’s this type of partisan back and fourth which has fiscal cliff negotiations stalled and has put the country on the precipice of a potential economic crisis. 
 
 Still, Barrasso said there’s time yet for a breakthrough when both Congress and the president return to Washington after the Christmas holiday. 
 
 “I don’t want us to go over the cliff, I want to find a solution,” Barrasso said. “I think there’s still time. We’re coming back here on the 27th.” 
 
 December 27th that is - leaving lawmakers just five days for negotiations before the country falls off the fiscal cliff. 
 
 Watch State of the Union with Candy Crowley Sundays at 9am ET. For the latest from State of the Union click here. ||||| 3 years ago 
 
 Washington (CNN) - Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Sunday credited President Barack Obama with winning the "fiscal cliff" battle, but argued the final deal will likely do little to help the nation's deficit problem. 
 
 "The president will get a political victory, a trophy for the president politically, but it will not change our debt situation or reduce our deficit in any meaningful way," Graham told CNN. "It will be a political victory that is hollow in nature when it comes to preventing our country from becoming Greece." 
 
 
 
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 The senator further criticized the president, blasting him for failing to take action "in a bipartisan manner" or "embrace big ideas like entitlement reform." 
 
 "He is really, quite frankly, small-minded in consequential times. I find him to be a hard guy to know and understand," he said. 
 
 His comments came after Graham declared on Fox News that the president has "won" the fiscal cliff negotiations, even though a final deal has yet to be announced. 
 
 "Hats off to the president - he won," Graham said. 
 
 "He stood his ground," the senator also said. "He's going to get tax rate increases, maybe not (for people making) $250,000, but on upper-income Americans." 
 
 With less than two days before the January 1 deadline to prevent major tax hikes and automatic spending cuts from taking effect, Senate leaders and senior staff are hunkering down on Capitol Hill to come up with a deficit-reduction plan that can pass both chambers. 
 
 Graham said if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can get a majority of Republicans to sign on to the final deal in the Democratic-controlled Senate, then the bill has a strong chance in the House. 
 
 "I think you will get a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats in the House, if you can get 60% of the Republicans in the Senate," he said on Fox. 
 
 At issue is disagreement over extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Obama and Democrats say the tax cuts should expire on households making more than $250,000, while Republicans maintain the tax breaks should be continued for all Americans. 
 
 The Senate convenes at 1 p.m. ET Sunday, and the House could hold votes as early as 6:30 p.m. ET 
 
 Graham said he's in favor of getting a deal passed, though he may be holding his nose if that deal includes any sort of tax increases. 
 
 "I want to vote for it, even though I won't like it, because the country has got a lot at stake here," he said. ||||| Business executives and others who’ve met with President Barack Obama in recent days describe a president who’s supremely confident that he’ll come out on top of a fiscal cliff deal — with Republicans bending to his will on tax increases for the wealthy and Democrats sucking up deep spending cuts. 
 
 These people say Obama is dismissive of the idea that deduction limitations and loophole closings alone are a sufficient or even desirable way to achieve the $1 trillion or more in new revenue he is seeking. And they say the president believes his relentless public campaign — which continued Wednesday and hits the road on Friday — along with widespread support in polls for letting the top George W. Bush-era rate cuts expire will overwhelm any remaining GOP resistance. 
 
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 reset Obama presses Congress on tax cuts POLITICO LIVE: Quick deal coming? 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Cliff dive doesn’t appeal to White House) 
 
 “For him the question on top rates isn’t just about fairness, it’s about math,” said one top financial services executive, who like others interviewed for this story declined to be identified by name in order to speak candidly about private meetings. “You might be able to get a similar amount of revenue but all of the deduction closings would create their own problems. Closing the mortgage deduction could hurt the housing market, for example. His commitment to rate increases is absolutely unshakable and he believes the politics are firmly on his side.” 
 
 The executive and others briefed on White House fiscal cliff strategy say if the GOP line against marginal rate increases somehow holds between now and the end of the year, when the fiscal cliff tax hikes and spending cuts begin to kick in, the president is confident he can use a pair of bully pulpit bazookas early next year — the second inaugural address and the State of the Union speech — to blast Republicans as holding the American economy hostage to a narrow and outdated ideology. 
 
 (See also: Reid: Tie debt ceiling, fiscal cliff) 
 
 The inaugural is usually more of a positive, sweeping kind of speech, but even that address would allow the president to clearly articulate his vision in contrast to that of Congressional Republicans, these people said. 
 
 “He’d rather get past this and use the speeches to lay out the vision for the second term on immigration, energy, climate, broader deficit reduction and other issues, but if he has to, he will call Republicans out yet again,” said the executive, who has been in White House meetings. “And they just don’t have anything like that kind of platform to respond.” 
 
 The executive and others who attended or were briefed on White House meetings added that the president was also adamant about having dividend and capital gains tax rates rise from their Bush-era levels but was not doctrinaire about exactly where they should wind up. 
 
 The White House already sees signs that the public pressure campaign is melting GOP opposition. 
 
 The latest example comes from Rep. Tom Cole, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Oklahoma Republican said on Tuesday that the GOP should agree to a quick deal that keeps the Bush era tax rates for 98 percent of taxpayers while letting the top two rates increase. 
 
 Cole said doing so would not violate Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge signed by many Republicans because it would amount to approving a tax cut for most tax payers and simply doing nothing about the other rates, which were scheduled to expire under the legislation first pushed by Bush in 2001. ||||| (Updated 7.00am ET, Jan. 2) 
 
 Despite waves of last-minute drama and discord, the fiscal cliff bill has now been approved by both the US Senate and the House of Representatives, and awaits the president’s signature to be signed into law. 
 
 The final agreement on the deal should minimize any impact of the fiscal cliff—the drastic package of austerity measures and tax hikes triggered as of Jan. 1. Measures that kicked in immediately—such as the suspension of extended unemployment benefits—can be retroactively revoked. 
 
 And investors showed appreciation for the deal, with markets across Europe rallying early on the news with big gains across major indexes. Notable equity advances included the mining industry led by Rio Tinto Group, automotive stocks including Porsche, Volkwagen, BMW and Daimler, and banks such as Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank. 
 
 In any case, the deal is by no means a solution to the longer-term goal (paywall) of reducing the deficit by $3-$4 trillion over 10 years. It’s not even really a solution to the fiscal cliff itself. It merely puts off some decisions. 
 
 Virtually nobody likes the current deal, which comes after the US technically went over the fiscal cliff. Liberals think it grants too many concessions to the wealthy (paywall) and leaves the government still hostage to talks over the debt ceiling in the coming weeks. Conservatives, still bristling at an aggressive speech from President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, are angry at having to allow any tax hikes at all. (The House vote was 257-167, with Democrats overwhelmingly backing the bill but only one-third of Republicans in favor. Politico has a detailed reconstruction of the legislative sausage-making.) It’s in the context of this broad discontent that things got messy over the past two days. 
 
 Now that it’s speeding its way into law, what does it mean? 
 
 What has been agreed 
 
 The main outlines of the bill (see also a summary at our sister publication National Journal): 
 
 Income tax rates will rise on couples filing jointly with taxable household income over $450,000 (the Democrats had earlier wanted a $250,000 threshold), or approximately the top 1%. 
 
 Capital gains and dividend taxes rise somewhat, estate taxes increase slightly (Republicans had wanted no change), and various tax credits are extended 
 
 The payroll tax cut expires 
 
 Unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless last another year 
 
 All but the highest earners are exempted from the alternative minimum tax 
 
 A 27% cut in Medicare payments to doctors is waived 
 
 What’s been kicked down the road (and how far) ||||| In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, President Barack Obama tells David Gregory he's optimistic the fiscal cliff can be averted, lays out the goals for his second term, and also discusses the Benghazi attack and how it was handled by the administration and those on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Updated at 1:30 p.m. ET: President Barack Obama on Sunday said congressional Republicans and their insistence on preventing tax increases for the very wealthy are standing in the way of a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. 
 
 In an exclusive interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," the president chided House Republicans as the clock continued to run out on a potential agreement. 
 
 "They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way, but the way they're behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected," Obama said. "That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme." 
 
 President Barack Obama says he negotiated with House Speaker Boehner in good faith and moved more than halfway in order to achieve a grand bargain. 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner issued a statement shortly after Obama's interview was broadcast accusing the president of backpedaling on "needed cuts and reforms" that he had previously agreed upon. 
 
 With a little more than one day remaining before the nation faces automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that could impact an already-wobbling American economy, the president implied that there has been little progress in recent days to justify hopes of a last-minute deal to prevent going over the fiscal cliff at year's end. 
 
 "I was modestly optimistic yesterday, but we don't yet see an agreement," he said in the interview, taped on Saturday at the White House. "And now the pressure's on Congress to produce." 
 
 Read the full transcript 
 
 The president appeared open to eliminating at least some of the scheduled automatic spending cuts if Republicans agree to tax increases for the wealthy. Those cuts are slated to impact defense spending and non-entitlement discretionary spending beginning on Jan. 1. 
 
 "If we have raised some revenue by the wealthy paying a little bit more, that would be sufficient to turn off what's called the sequester, these automatic spending cuts, and that also would have a better outcome for our economy long-term," he said. 
 
 The president challenged Republicans to vote on legislation that he said should be introduced by the Democrat-controlled Senate to prevent taxes on the "middle class" from being increased. 
 
 But he did not specify what income level he would be willing to accept as a dividing line between those who retain Bush-era tax rates and those whose rates would increase. The president has consistently supported increasing taxes on families making over $250,000 a year, but that figure has been a major bargaining chip in negotiations. 
 
 Wherever the line on tax increases ends up, Obama urged a vote in both houses on a final Senate bill if a broader agreement cannot be reached. 
 
 Pete Souza / White House Photo President Barack Obama is interviewed by David Gregory of NBC's "Meet The Press" in the Blue Room of the White House, Dec. 29, 2012. 
 
 "Everybody should have a right to vote on that," he said. "If Republicans don't like it, they can vote no. But I actually think that there's a majority support for making sure that middle class families are held harmless." 
 
 "So far, at least, Congress has not been able to get this stuff done," he added. "Not because Democrats in Congress don't want to go ahead and cooperate, but because I think it's been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican Leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit, as part of an overall deficit reduction package." 
 
 Dismissing the notion that the Democratic Party is as compromise-averse as the GOP, the president said Democrats -- "warts and all" -- have more consistently agreed to components of bipartisan deals. 
 
 "What I'm arguing for are maintaining tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. I don't think anybody would consider that some liberal left-wing agenda. That used to be considered a pretty mainstream Republican agenda," he said. "And it's something that we can accomplish today if we simply allow for a vote in the Senate and in the House to get it done. The fact that it's not happening is an indication of how far certain factions inside the Republican Party have gone where they can't even accept what used to be considered centrist, mainstream positions on these issues." 
 
 The president offered no new suggestions of compromise measures that may be more palatable to Republicans, although he acknowledged that some Democrats oppose entitlement adjustments and some of the spending cuts that he's put forward during negotiations. 
 
 The president games out different scenarios of how he thinks the fiscal cliff negotiations will be resolved. 
 
 "The offers that I've made to [Republicans] have been so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me," he said, noting that his acceptance of Chained CPI, a measure that would change the way Social Security payments are determined, has caused particular rancor within his own party. 
 
 "Highly unpopular among Democrats," he said of the proposed change. "Not something supported by AARP. But in pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long-term I'm willing to make those decisions." 
 
 If an impasse remains in place, Obama warned, Republicans' rejection of his version of deficit reduction plans would be enough to send financial markets skidding. 
 
 "What's been holding us back is the dysfunction here in Washington," he said. "And if people start seeing that on January 1st this problem still hasn't been solved, that we haven't seen the kind of deficit reduction that we could have had had the Republicans been willing to take the deal that I gave them, if they say that people's taxes have gone up, which means consumer spending is going to be depressed, then obviously that's going to have an adverse reaction in the markets." 
 
 In his statement, Boehner, R-Ohio, called Obama's comments "ironic," saying that "a recurring theme of our negotiations was his unwillingness to agree to anything that would require him to stand up to his own party. Needed cuts and reforms that the president agreed to just last year were no longer on the table, as he cited an inability to sell them to Democrats. 
 
 "In an effort to get the president to agree to cut spending -- which is the problem -- I put revenues on the table last year, and I put them on the table again last month. Republicans made every effort to reach the 'balanced' deficit agreement that the president promised the American people, while the president has continued to insist on a package skewed dramatically in favor of higher taxes that would destroy jobs. We've been reasonable and responsible. The president is the one who has never been able to get to 'yes.'" 
 
 NBC News' Frank Thorp contributed to this report. ||||| “Talk to Joe Biden and McConnell,” Mr. Reid told reporters when asked if negotiations were continuing. 
 
 In the balance are more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases on virtually every working American and across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to begin Tuesday. Taken together, they threaten to push the economy back into recession. 
 
 “It looks awful,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois , the second-ranking Democrat. “I’m sure the American people are saying, with so much at stake why are they waiting so late to get this done?” 
 
 Photo 
 
 Senator Lindsey Graham , Republican of South Carolina , who had said early Sunday that he thought a deal was within reach, said later on his Twitter feed, “I think we’re going over the cliff.” 
 
 Weeks of negotiations between President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner inched toward a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, while locking in trillions of dollars in deficit reduction over 10 years and starting an effort to overhaul the tax code and entitlement programs like Medicare . But earlier this month, Mr. Boehner walked away from those talks. 
 
 Instead he tried to reach a much more modest deal to avoid a fiscal crisis by extending the expiring tax cuts for incomes under $1 million. When Mr. Boehner’s own Republican members revolted, he ceded negotiations to the Senate. But compromise has proved equally elusive in that chamber. 
 
 Absent a last-minute deal, Mr. Reid is expected to move on Monday to bring to a vote a stopgap measure pushed by Mr. Obama, which would retain lower tax rates for incomes below $250,000 and extend unemployment benefits. But it was not clear that would even get a vote. The objection of a single senator on Monday would run out the clock on the 112th Congress before a final tally could be taken. 
 
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 Mr. Obama appeared on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday and implored Congress to act. “We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers.” 
 
 He added, “Now the pressure’s on Congress to produce.” 
 
 After the talks broke down over the inflation demand, Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting on Sunday afternoon to declare the issue off the table for now. Senator John McCain , Republican of Arizona , said that holding the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was “not a winning hand.” 
 
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 Then they mustered a new talking point, saying Democrats want to raise taxes only to spend more money. Their new objection: Democrats are seeking a one- to two-year “pause” for across-the-board spending cuts and an extension of expired unemployment benefits for two million people. 
 
 “We raise taxes, and we spend more?” asked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison , Republican of Texas . “It’s business as usual.” 
 
 For their part, Democrats beat back the inflation proposal, and then promptly proclaimed themselves incensed that Republicans would not soften their position on a generous level of taxation on inherited estates and an insistence that a final deal permanently prevent the alternative minimum tax , a parallel tax system meant to ensure that wealthy people pay more, from expanding to affect more of the middle class. 
 
 Photo 
 
 Democrats were also demanding that across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs — known as the “sequester” — at least be delayed. 
 
 “We’re not here to defend government, we’re here to make sure of the defense of our country,” said Senator Barbara A. Mikulski , Democrat of Maryland , whose state would be hit particularly hard. “Sequester has consequences.” 
 
 Senate Democratic aides were openly making legislative plans for later this week, to press Democratic proposals after the fiscal deadline is breached — and after the next Congress is sworn in on Thursday with more Democrats in both the House and the Senate. 
 
 But officials close to the negotiations said the talks were continuing, centered for now on a new axis, Mr. McConnell and Mr. Biden. 
 
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 Much of the umbrage was oddly discordant. Mr. Obama has long advocated for a permanent fix to the alternative minimum tax, which must be “patched” each year to keep it from applying to middle-income families. Until this weekend, both Democrats and Republicans appeared willing to let the across-the-board cuts take effect, at least temporarily, while a larger deficit deal is negotiated early next year. 
 
 Indeed, many Republicans were the loudest in protesting the cuts. Now that Democrats want them canceled, Republicans equate that position to raising taxes in order to spend more. 
 
 On some of the biggest sticking points, the two sides are now inches apart. Barely a week after House Republicans refused to vote to allow taxes to rise on incomes over $1 million, Senate Republicans proposed allowing tax rates to rise on incomes over $450,000 for individuals and $550,000 for couples. Democrats countered with a proposal to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts up to $360,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. For both sides, that meant major movement. Mr. Obama has been holding firm at a $250,000 threshold. 
 
 Of course, a big question hung over the negotiations in the Senate: even if the Senate can find an accord, would it pass the House? 
 
 Even on the estate tax , the two sides are not far apart, although their language is. Republicans want to tax estates valued above $5 million at 35 percent. Democrats want to tax inheritances above $3.5 million at 45 percent. 
 
 If that sounds like a bridgeable divide, Democrats are not conceding an inch. “The net result is that 6,000 Americans would get a $1-million-a-year tax break on their estate tax,” Mr. Durbin said. “The Republicans once again are ready to shut us down over not 2 percent of the population, but 0.1 percent of the population.”
– President Obama wasn't the only show on the Sunday dial today: On the eve of the fiscal cliff, Lindsey Graham was upbeat about the chances of a deal, telling Fox News they were "exceedingly good." "Hats off to the president," said Graham, according to Politico. "He stood his ground. He's going to get tax rate increases. It will be a political victory for the president." John Barrasso wasn't nearly so positive, saying, "We’re trying to line up a Rubik’s cube right now, and we're not there yet." He blamed Obama for "outsourcing" negotiations to Congress, calling it "a monumental failure of presidential leadership." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial, as per Politico: Chuck Schumer on the cliff: "I've been a legislator for 37 years, and I've watched how these things work. On these big, big agreements, they almost always happen at the last minute. Neither side likes to give up its position. But then, each side, realizing that the alternative is worse, comes to an agreement. So while an agreement is hardly a certainty, I certainly wouldn't rule it out at this last minute." Dianne Feinstein on gun control: "America has to bite the bullet of what these incidents mean to our people, to our nation and our nation's standing in the world. When you have someone walking in and slaying in the most brutal way, 6-year-olds, something is really wrong." Tom Vilsack on that other (farm bill) 'cliff:' "Consumers are going to be shocked when instead of seeing $3.60 a gallon for milk, they see $7 a gallon for milk. And that’s going to ripple throughout all of the commodities if this thing goes on for an extended period of time."