Both parties have begun work on minimal deficit-reduction proposals, aimed at avoiding the automatic tax increases and spending cuts while a bigger package is negotiated.
“At this point, all they’re looking for is a fig leaf,” said Stan Collender, a former staff member of the House Ways and Means Committee and the House and Senate Budget committees who is now at Qorvis Communications in Washington. “There’s no grand bargain. There never was.”
Small Deal
The trouble is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, need to come up with something that also can get through the House, which has balked at any tax increases. Senate Republicans don’t want to be on the record supporting higher taxes unless they know the House also would pass it.
“There’s still a chance for them to get a deal,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist who once served as a spokesman for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. “It grows more unlikely by the day, and there’s not a lot of days left.”