Hopes high that last-minute fiscal cliff deal can be clinched
Washington – Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said today that chances for a limited ‘‘fiscal cliff’’ deal in the next 48 hours were ‘‘exceedingly good’’, as talks to avoid tax increases and spending cuts on New Year’s Day went down to the wire.
‘‘I think people don’t want to go over the cliff if we can avoid it,’’ Graham, a leading conservative, told Fox News today.
He predicted that Republicans in the United States Congress were going to accept some form of tax increases for wealthier Americans. This would hand a victory to President Barack Obama, although a leading Democrat warned of a big gap in talks between the parties.
Obama was ‘‘going to get tax rate increases’’ on upper-income Americans in the talks, Graham said.
The leading senators from both parties are working on a stopgap fiscal cliff deal to avoid taxes increasing for almost all Americans on New Year’s Day. They will probably leave the details of some other thorny fiscal issues, like government spending cuts, until January.
Graham urged Republicans to make a stand later, when the time came for Congress to decide on rais- ing the government’s debt ceiling.
‘‘This deal won’t affect the debt situation. It will be a political victory for the president, and I hope we’ll have the courage of our convictions when it comes time to raise the debt ceiling to fight for what we believe as Republicans, but hats off to the president – he won,’’ Graham said.
Lawmakers are seeking a lastminute deal that would set aside US$600 billion (NZ$731.7b) in tax increases and across-the-board government spending cuts that are set to start within days. If Congress does not act, the measures are likely to push the US into a recession.
Senator Richard Durbin, a member of the Democratic leadership, told the Face the Nation show on CBS that there was still a ‘‘chasm’’ between the two parties in fiscal cliff negotiations, but anything was possible when Congress faced a deadline.
Graham said that if the Senate was unable to come up with the votes, it would be more difficult for any deal to get through the House of Representatives.
‘‘And 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.