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WASHINGTON — With just eight days to go before the fiscal-cliff deadline, chagrined members of Congress expressed increasing fear yesterday that negotiators won’t reach a deal in time.
“I feel that it’s more likely that we will go over the cliff than not,” retiring Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“If we allow that to happen, it will be the most colossal, consequential act of congressional irresponsibility in a long time, maybe ever in American history.”
Republicans blamed Senate Democrats and Obama for the impasse over the $600 billion in tax hikes and government cuts set to go into effect if there’s no deal by Jan. 1.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) accused Obama of wanting to take the government over the edge.
“I think the president sees victory at the bottom of the cliff,” Barrasso said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“He gets all this additional tax revenue for new programs, he gets to cut the military, which Democrats have been calling for for years, and he gets to blame Republicans for it.”
Democrats were more optimistic.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that $200 million in spending cuts and $200 million in revenue separate the two sides.
“Out of a $4 trillion budget, that doesn’t seem insurmountable,” he said. “So I hope they keep talking.”
Retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Republicans and Democrats should split the difference in their proposals with a deal that would amount to $1.45 trillion in spending cuts and $1.15 trillion in new tax and other revenue.
“I would hope we would have one last attempt here to do what everyone knows needs to be done, which is the larger plan that really does stabilize the debt and get us moving in the right direction,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) encouraged voters to press their legislators.
“I hope if anyone sees these representatives from the House in line shopping or getting their Christmas turkey, they wish them a Merry Christmas . . . and then say, ‘Go back to the table, not your own table, the table in Washington,’ ” she said on Fox News.
No talks are planned in the next few days. President Obama is on vacation in Hawaii, and Congress isn’t slated to come back to work until Thursday.
Talks stumbled last week after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could not get enough votes from GOPers for a “Plan B” proposal that would have cut spending and lowered taxes to greater degrees than Democrats want.
That failure led to talk that Boehner’s speakership was in jeopardy. But Boehner, so far, has no serious challenger to his job, and says he’s not worried about losing the post.