Secretary' -- Leibo goes to NFL game with Rubio, Alex - Diane Sawyer, Ted Cruz bday Presented by 
 
 SEN. BOB CORKER (R-Tenn.), to Peter Cook on tomorrow’s Bloomberg TV “Capitol Gains”: “It's time for us to get specific and not create another fiscal cliff, which is really what's being proposed -- creating another fiscal cliff to deal with this fiscal cliff.” 
 
 PRESIDENT OBAMA, in the Brady Press Briefing Room before he left for Hawaii: “In the next few days, I've asked leaders of Congress to work towards a package that prevents a tax hike on middle-class Americans, protects unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans, and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction. He and Mr. Obama didn't sit down together for another 10 days. And because we didn’t get this done, I will see you next week.” 
 
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 PALACE INTRIGUE – “How 'Cliff' Talks Hit the Wall: Behind Scenes, Boehner Failed to Sell Republicans on Taxes, While Obama's Spending Plans Rankled,” by Patrick O’Connor and Peter Nicholas: “[A]ccording to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, ‘I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?’ ‘You get nothing,’ the president said. ‘I get that for free.’ … Responded Mr. Boehner: ‘I've found in my life that everything I've ever wanted has come with price.’ … Brett Loper, the speaker's top policy aide, prodded White House officials to look for tax revenue elsewhere. In phone calls and meetings, he steered them to tax shelters and suggested limiting deductions for tax-exempt municipal bonds. "I'm going to keep the proposal on the table," he said of the broader deal. Are you going to help me or not?’ … 
 
 “ During one session in the Capitol with White House's legislative liaison Rob Nabors, Mr. Loper … asked, referring to a near-deal during last year's debt-ceiling fight: ‘Can you get back into the zone of where you were in July 2011?’ ‘No,’ Mr. Nabors replied. ‘We were probably overextended then, and there's no way we would do it now.’ Mr. Nabors said if they couldn't reach a deal, they should keep lines of communication alive. … Loper asked, ‘So, you're breaking up with us?’ 
 
 “On Dec. 13, Mr. Boehner went to the White House at the president's request, joking he was going to the woodshed. Back in the Capitol, Mr. Boehner told Mr. Cantor the president wasn't moving. In truth, talks to secure a big deficit-reduction deal had already broken down Monday afternoon in the office of Mr. Boehner (R., Ohio), a Wall Street Journal reconstruction shows. If Mr. Boehner chose it, the president said, the country and financial markets would cheer. Door No. 2 represented a spike in interest rates and a global recession. Mr. Boehner said he wanted a deal along the lines of what the two men had negotiated in the summer of 2011 in a fight over raising the debt ceiling. ‘You missed your opportunity on that,’ the president told him.” 
 
 --PLAYBOOK BACKSTORY, from someone familiar with the negotiations: “A few weeks ago, the WSJ asked the White House and the Speaker’s office to participate in a Newsweek-book-style project where they shared information about the talks on an embargoed basis to reporters who were taken off the daily story to avoid conflicts. In the speaker's office just off the Capitol's majestic rotunda that afternoon, he told his top lieutenants that he was already thinking about a pared-down backup plan. We liked the “I get that for free” quote, but the Journal didn’t get the context. The White House expects that if we go over the cliff, the House will have to pass that bill, too, and the president would have little choice but to sign it. But there’s no reason to cut a deal with Boehner in which the White House gives up spending cuts in order to get a tax increase they can have anyway. WSJ's David Wessel tells you everything you need to know about the "cliff" but were afraid to ask. The White House would insist that the next deal includes a 1:1 ratio of tax increases — all of which could come through Republican-friendly tax reform — to spending cuts. (hat tip: Tammy) 
 
 BIRTHDAYS TOMORROW: Chris Peacock , a Debate Commission spin-alley monitor, and former communications aide to Lloyd Bentsen, Donna Shalala, and Nancy Ann DeParle, is 52 … John Russell IV, Senior Managing Director at SNR Denton, is 38 (hat tip: his much better half) … MONDAY: Dorinda Moss, NRSC Finance Director (h/t Ben Ginsberg) … Jonathan Murphy, Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress … WEDNESDAY: Jill Cooper Udall … Matthew Verghese, the Political/Communications Director of the Maryland Democratic Party, has his 26th birthday on Dec. 26 th (h/t Betsy Dudley) … DEC. 29: Andrew Malcolm, Rep. Greg Walden's press secretary (h/t Greg Meiselbach and Laura Reed) … DEC. 30: Lauren Claffey, press secretary for Sen. Saxby Chambliss (h/ts Bronwyn Lance Chester) 
 
 THE SHOWS, from @MattMackowiak: 
 
 -- NBC’s “Meet the Press”: NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); roundtable with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN), NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and NBC’s Chuck Todd 
 
 -- ABC’s “This Week”: Former DEA administrator and NRA Director of the National School Shield Program former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR); the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s Sarah Brady; Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA); Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); roundtable with Mayor Cory Booker (D-Newark), Americans for Tax Reform president and NRA Board Member Grover Norquist, ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and The Nation Magazine’s Katrina vanden Heuvel 
 
 -- CBS’s “Face the Nation”: NRA president David Keene; Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA); Sen.-designee Tim Scott (R-SC); actor/director and Eastern Congo Initiative founder Ben Affleck; roundtable with Major Garrett, Margaret Brennan and Mike Allen 
 
 -- “Fox News Sunday”: Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY); Saddleback Church founder and senior pastor Rick Warren; roundtable with The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, Daily Beast columnist Kirsten Powers, radio host Laura Ingraham and Fox News’ Juan Williams 
 
 -- CNN’s “State of the Union” (9 a.m. and noon): Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) and Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH); Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); former DEA administrator and NRA Director of the National School Shield Program former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR); roundtable with National Journal’s Ron Brownstein, TIME Magazine’s Michael Duffy and USA Today’s Susan Page 
 
 -- CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”: (SUN 10am ET / 1pm ET): Economic roundtable with The Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes, Thomson Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland, former Bush administration chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard and former Obama administration OMB director Peter Orszag; Washington Post columnist and Legatum Institute’s Anne Applebaum; author and former Obama administration “car czar” and Willett Advisors, LLC chairman Steven Rattner (“Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry”) 
 
 -- C-SPAN: “The Communicators” (SAT 6:30pm ET): Author and Wired Magazine’s Andrew Blum (“Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet”) … “Newsmakers” (SUN 10am ET / 6pm ET): Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), questioned by POLITICO’s Tim Mak and Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin … “Q&A” (SUN 8pm ET / 11pm ET): 90 minute interview with c-author Paul Reid, who co-authored with William Manchester, the third and final volume of the historical trilogy, “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965) 
 
 -- NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show”: Roundtable with BBC’s Katty Kay, TIME magazine’s Michael Duffy, The New York Times’ Helene Cooper and ABC News’ Sam Donaldson 
 
 --ABC7’s “Inside Washington”: (SAT 7pm ET on NewsChannel 8 / SUN 9am ET on ABC7 WJLA): Roundtable with Washington Post columnist Colbert King; NPR’s Nina Totenberg and syndicated columnists Mark Shields and Charles Krauthammer 
 
 -- Bloomberg’s “Political Capital” with Al Hunt (SUN 8am ET / 1pm ET): Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) 
 
 -- Bloomberg’s “Capitol Gains” (Bloomberg TV SUN 12pm ET / 5pm ET): Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) 
 
 -- PBS’s “To the Contrary”: Roundtable with Del. So a subsequent deal that included $600 billion or $700 billion in spending cuts would also include $600 billion or $700 billion in tax increases, leading to total new revenue in the range of $1.2 trillion to $1.4 trillion.
– The Wall Street Journal has what it bills as a "behind scenes" look at how the fiscal cliff talks went sour this week—on Monday, to be precise—and a few passages stand out to suggest relations between the president and House Republicans may have actually gotten worse since the election: Boehner to Obama: "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?' Obama to Boehner: "You get nothing. I get that for free." At another point, Boehner told the president he wanted a deal similar to the one he rejected during their debt ceiling talks of 2011. "You missed your opportunity on that," replied the president. Eventually, an "irritated" Boehner decided to move ahead with his Plan B even while keeping the broader deal on the table. It was a decision that "incensed" the president. (Boehner eventually had to call off the vote anyway.) Read the full Journal story here. At Politico, Mike Allen says it's mostly a "rehash" of old news. But Ezra Klein at the Washington Post thinks the "I get that for free" exchange is "the central fact of negotiations for the Democrats and the central problem for the Republicans." Read his full explanation here of why Democrats think the $800 billion figure isn't what it seems. The talks, meanwhile, remain in limbo until after Christmas, when the best hope will be that the two sides can agree on a scaled-down, temporary plan.