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Columbus
Dispatch
Blame
Game back in Cliff talks
By Lisa Mascaro and Melanie Mason
Wednesday December 12, 2012
WASHINGTON
— Optimism surrounding
secretive high-level budget talks faded quickly yesterday amid a fresh
round of
partisan finger-pointing, reducing the chances of resolving the fiscal
standoff
by Christmas.
House
Speaker John Boehner of West
Chester spoke to President Barack Obama by phone late in the evening
after
presenting a GOP counteroffer.
Republicans,
meanwhile, showed
further signs of political division. Top members of the party,
including former
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and an influential business group, said
the GOP
should accept the president’s offer to raise tax rates on the top 2
percent of
Americans in exchange for spending cuts.
“If
you have the whole package, I
would hold my nose — despite the fact that raising those two tax
brackets is
bad economics, bad for jobs, is going to hurt the economy,” Barbour, a
past
chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on MSNBC’s Morning
Joe. “I
would hold my nose to get the other done.”
The
Business Roundtable, made up of
chief executives from some of the nation’s largest companies, shifted
from its
long-standing opposition to tax-rate hikes…
Read
the rest of the article at the
Columbus Dispatch
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