No Fiscal Cliff Deal: Obama, Congress Fail To Reach Agreement, Won’t Vote On Monday
The fiscal cliff is coming. President Obama and Congress have failed to come to a deal on the set of tax increases and spending cuts set to automatically kick in when 2013 begins.
The breaking news was splashed across the top of CNN.com and Yahoo.com, even as stories about the increased optimism from earlier in the day remained.
The failure to achieve a fiscal cliff deal could have something to do with remarks Obama made on Monday. At a midday press conference, Obama took shots at Congress for the difficulty in negotiations, saying he would demand more tax hikes if Congress used the coming debt ceiling standoff to try to get more spending cuts.
“If Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction, through spending cuts alone — and you hear that sometimes coming from them — sort of, after today we’re just going to try to shove only spending cuts down, you know, well — shove spending — shove spending cuts at us, that will hurt seniors, or hurt students, or hurt middle-class families without asking also equivalent sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists … if they think that’s going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, they have another thing coming,” Obama said.
That didn’t go over well with Republican leaders, The Huffington Post noted.
“Potus just moved the goalpost again. Significantly. This is new,” tweeted a top aide to Senator Mitch McConnell.
A spokesman for Eric Cantor said, “So….I’m confused….does POTUS want a deal or not? Because all those jabs at Congress certainly sounded like a smack in the face to me.”
A source close to House Republican leadership told The Huffington Post that President Obama’s remarks set the entire Congress in “revolt,” and was likely a reason the fiscal cliff deal was blown up.
A source close to House Republican leadership went even further, telling HuffPost that the lower chamber was in revolt over Obama’s remarks and that the deal could blow up because of them.
