WASHINGTON (AP) -- When it comes to the nation's budget challenges, congressional leaders are fond of saying dismissively they don't want to kick the can down the road.
But now, a deadline hard ahead,
even derided half-measures are uncertain as President Barack Obama and
lawmakers struggle to avert across-the-board tax increases and spending
cuts that comprise an economy-threatening fiscal cliff.
Congressional
officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a
compromise over a long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been
set.
After conferring on a conference call,
the House Republican leadership said they remain ready for talks, but
gave no hint they intend to call lawmakers back into session unless the
Senate first passes legislation.
"The lines of
communication remain open, and we will continue to work with our
colleagues to avert the largest tax hike in American history, and to
address the underlying problem, which is spending," the leadership said
in a statement.
The Senate is due in session
Thursday, although the immediate agenda includes legislation setting the
rules for government surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists
abroad, including Americans, as well as a measure providing $60 billion
for victims of Superstorm Sandy.
Obama decided to cut short his Hawaii vacation for an overnight flight expected to get him back to the White House on Thursday.
Apart
from the cliff, other financial challenges loom for divided government,
where political brinkmanship has become the norm. The Treasury
disclosed during the day it would take accounting measures to avoid
reaching the government's borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion by year's
end. The changes will provide about two months of additional leeway.
Separately, spending authority for much of the government will expire on March 27, 2013.
After
weeks of negotiations, the president urged lawmakers late last week to
scale back their ambitions for avoiding the fiscal cliff and send him
legislation preventing tax cuts on all but the highest-earning Americans
and extending unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless. Longer,
term, he said he still supports deficit cuts that were key to the
earlier talks.
"Everybody's got to give a little bit in a sensible way," he said at the White House.
The
House has no plans to convene, following last week's rebellion in which
conservatives torpedoed Speaker John Boehner's legislation to prevent
scheduled tax increases on most, while letting them take effect on
million-dollar wage earners.
"How we get
there, God only knows," the Ohio Republican said of efforts to protect
the economy - and taxpayers - from the tax increases and spending cuts.
"Now
is the time to show leadership, not kick the can down the road," Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said a little over a week ago after
Boehner announced he would shift his own focus from bipartisan talks to
the approach that eventually was torpedoed by his own rank and file.
It's
a phrase that political leaders use when they want to suggest others
want to avoid tackling major problems, and one that Boehner, House
Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and even Obama as well as Reid
have used.
"We have a spending problem. We
have to address it, And we're not going to address it by kicking the can
down the road," the speaker said at a news conference late last week
when he was asked about setting a vote on a plan that Democrats find
acceptable.
Cantor recently used the same
approach in challenging Obama to agree to savings from Medicare and
other benefit programs. "This has to be a part of this agreement or else
we just continue to dig the hole deeper, asking folks to allow us to
kick the can down the road further and that we don't want to do," he
said on Nov. 28.
In fact, it's a phrase that has been in use for over a year as Obama and Republicans jockey for position on pocketbook issues.
In
July 2011, when he was struggling with Republicans over the threat of a
first-ever government default, Obama said he had "heard reports that
there may be some in Congress who want to do just enough to make sure
that America avoids defaulting on our debt in the short term. But then
wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to solving the larger
problem, our deficit."
A few months later, an
extension of a payroll tax cut was the issue, and Boehner was insisting
on a year-long renewal rather than the temporary plan that passed the
Senate with votes from lawmakers in both parties.
"How
can you do tax policy for two months?" he asked on Dec. 18, 2011. "I
believe that two months is just kicking the can down the road.
"The American people are tired of that."
At
issue now is series of tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to
kick in with the new year that economists caution could send the economy
into a recession.
