President Barack Obama has promised a veto. Senate Democrats say the bill is “dead on arrival.” And conservative activists are whipping hard against it.

Although much has changed since the summer 2011 debt ceiling contest, the current negotiations (or lack thereof) over the so-called fiscal cliff are playing out in remarkably similar fashion.

House GOP leadership will try Thursday evening to wrangle 218 Republican votes for a “Plan B” bill to extend permanently current tax rates on incomes below $1 million.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) expressed confidence that the measure will pass.

It is likely to be close.

Conservative groups such as Heritage Action, Club for Growth, and Freedomworks oppose the effort and have urged lawmakers to vote no. Boehner can only afford to lose about 24 Republicans (assuming all Democrats vote no) or “Plan B” will be defeated. A whip count by the Hill put the number of GOP no votes at 25 just hours before the vote.

GOP leaders hope to avoid such a loss, which would resemble the failed July 2011 effort to approve the “Boehner plan” to raise the debt ceiling and apply pressure on Senate Democrats to follow suit.

House leaders appeared just as confident then that they would prevail but came up several votes shy of 218 and were forced to postpone the vote. The House ultimately approved debt ceiling legislation more in line with a proposal offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).

Many Republicans in both chambers of Congress felt their failure to win a vote on the Boehner plan destroyed their political leverage with the White House and forced them to accept a worse compromise than they otherwise would have been able to achieve.

For instance, the GOP plan would have only authorized a one-year extension of federal borrowing authority, forcing another debt ceiling showdown prior to the 2012 election. That is something Obama desperately wished to avoid.

House Republicans aides argue now, as they did in 2011, that passing “Plan B” would give them increased leverage in the ongoing debate and pressure Democrats to act to avert, as Boehner put it, “the largest tax hike in American history.”

“It puts [Democrats] in a pretty tough position,” said one GOP leadership aide. “Is Harry Reid really going to refuse to vote on this? Is the president really not going to sign it? Good luck with that.”

Conservative opposition notwithstanding, Boehner’s Plan B has been blessed by influential groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Tax Reform, which said in a statement that voting for the measure would not violate its Taxpayer Protection Pledge not to raise taxes.

There is considerable momentum behind the “Plan B” effort, aides say, as more House Republicans have come to accept that it may be the only possible deal on taxes they can achieve with Obama in the White House. Reports of a growing revolt against leadership are similarly unfounded, these aides say.

“This is the best possible outcome,” said the leadership aide. “This president is the most progressive president in our lifetime, and we’re going to get 99.81 percent of what we want on taxes? Great.”

Some sense weakness in the Democratic negotiating position, which could explain the vocal efforts by the White House and Senate Democrats to dismiss Plan B as a nonstarter.

In what is perhaps a foreboding indicator of Plan B’s prospects, 13 House Republicans on Thursday voted against a procedural measure to simply proceed to a vote on the measure, an unusually high number for a procedural vote.

In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, Rubio communications director Alex Conant said, “Promoting democracy in Latin America is a priority for Sen. Rubio, and he’s put holds on other administration nominees over the issue. If President Obama were to nominate Sen. Hagel for a cabinet position, I’m sure we would have questions about Cuba positions.”

The statement came in response to questions by the Free Beacon about Hagel’s past opposition to the trade embargo on Cuba.

In 2008, Hagel said “we have an outdated, unrealistic, irrelevant policy” in Cuba.

In 2002, Hagel said, “what Jimmy Carter’s saying … is exactly right: Our 40-year policy toward Cuba is senseless.” Hagel also called Fidel Castro “a toothless old dinosaur,” a comment sure to rankle those who have suffered under Castro’s regime.

President Barack Obama has done little to reorient U.S. policy toward Cuba, and has benefitted from his support for the embargo. In 2012, Obama received 47 percent of the Cuban-American vote, according to exit polls, a record for a Democratic candidate that gave Obama a major boost in his successful effort to secure Florida’s electoral votes.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Wednesday the House “will pass” the Republican Plan B—a permanent extension of current tax rates on incomes below $1 million—to provide tax relief for “99.81 percent of the American people.”

It then would be left to the Democratic Senate and President Barack Obama to prevent tax rates from going up on everyone in 2013.

“The president will have a decision to make. He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history,” Boehner told reporters at a brief press conference.

The speaker first proposed the backup option on Tuesday after negotiations with Obama broke down. The plan is nearly identical to one previously championed by leading Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.).

The House will also vote on a measure to restructure the looming spending sequester.

Boehner’s apparent confidence that he has enough Republicans votes to pass the Plan B measure was met with some skepticism.

House Democratic leaders are urging their members to vote against the bill, meaning Boehner can only afford to lose about 20-25 GOP votes. This could prove difficult in the face of opposition from conservative lawmakers and activist groups.

“It’s no secret that this bill is not a final product, but a bargaining tactic to make a larger deal even worse,” Andy Roth, Club for Growth vice president of government affairs, wrote in a letter to lawmakers on Wednesday.

Heritage Action reacted similarly and rejected Boehner’s portrayal of the bill as a “net tax cut.”

“America’s coming fiscal crisis is a result of overspending, not under-taxing,” the group wrote in a statement. “Allowing a tax increase to hit a certain segment of Americans and small businesses is not a solution; it is a political ploy.”

Both groups announced they would “score” the vote and urged lawmakers to vote no.

Additionally, the White House and Senate Democrats have made clear the Plan B bill would not pass the Senate, much less the president’s desk.

However, opposition to Boehner’s plan within the GOP is likely overblown. Aides cited significant “momentum” in favor of the proposal over the past 24 hours and echoed the speaker’s confidence that enough Republicans would back the measure.

Conservative opposition notwithstanding, a number of influential figures have given their blessing to Plan B.

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who has been reserved during the fiscal cliff negotiations, offered his support for the measure Wednesday afternoon. Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform said the group “will not consider a vote for [Plan B] a violation” of its Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

The Joint Committee on Taxation on Wednesday scored the proposal as a net $4 trillion tax cut over the next 10 years. Influential GOP Senators such as Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), John Cornyn (R., Texas), and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) also signaled their support.

Democrats’ urging of Boehner to return to the negotiating table in the wake of his proposal indicates they may be concerned that a successful House passage could put them in a difficult spot politically, one GOP leadership aide argued.

“It puts them in a pretty tough position,” the aide said. “Is Harry Reid really going to refuse to vote on this? Is the president really not going to sign it? Good luck with that.”

Republican momentum regarding Plan B has been driven by a growing acceptance that permanently preserving more than 99 percent of the Bush tax rates would be a considerable achievement, especially with Obama in the White House.

“This is the best possible outcome,” said the leadership aide. “This president is the most progressive president in our lifetime, and we’re going to get 99.81 percent of what we want on taxes? Great.”

Republicans concede that although Plan B does not address the nation’s spending problem, a looming showdown over the debt ceiling next year will provide an opportunity to do just that.

Boehner has not ruled out a return to negotiations with Obama but said the president needs to “get serious soon about providing and working with us on a balanced approach.”

The adjustment, known as chained CPI, would save about $130 billion by changing the way Social Security benefit increases are calculated and ultimately slow their rate of growth over time.

Obama reportedly offered the adjustment as part of his most recent proposal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

Liberals were not pleased.

Liberal blogger Jonathan Chait decried the “painful cuts” in Obama’s proposal.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, said the group’s members “overwhelmingly oppose” cuts to Social Security benefits and that any agreement that does so would be seen as “a betrayal that sells out working and middle class families.”

Krugman lamented the “awful” symbolism of a Democratic president agreeing to cut Social Security.

However, top Democrats signaled a willingness to accept, or declined to rule out, chained CPI as part of a larger budget deal despite left-wing criticisms.

When MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on Tuesday if she could sell the Social Security adjustment to House Democrats despite reservations among liberals, Pelosi said “I do,” before noting that President Obama “has demonstrated great leadership in what he put forth.”

“The Democrats will stick with the president,” Pelosi said.

White House press secretary Jay Carney defended the proposal.

“The president has always said, as part of this process, when we’re talking about the spending cut side of this, that it would require tough choices by both sides,” he told reporters. “[Chained CPI] is a technical adjustment that supporters of it and economists, outside economists say is meant to make the government’s estimates of inflation more accurate.”

Senate leaders Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) both declined to say if they would support a final fiscal cliff proposal that included chained CPI despite previously voicing strong opposition to any changes to Social Security.

The media spotlight has focused primarily on House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), who faces renewed criticism from the right following reports that he told the White House he could accept some tax rate increases on wealthy earners and a possible one-year debt ceiling extension in exchange for significant spending cuts and entitlement reform.

However, House leadership aides dismissed the reports as inaccurate rumors and said they remained hopeful the speaker could strike a deal that a majority of the GOP conference can rally behind.

That could prove a difficult task in the face of vocal opposition from conservative lawmakers and activists groups.

Conservative groups Club for Growth and Heritage Action on Monday strongly criticized Boehner’s reported concessions.

“The proposal, as reported, represents a clear path toward surrender on conservative principles,” said Heritage Action spokesman Dan Holler.

“First Speaker Boehner offered to raise tax rates after promising not to, and now he’s offering to raise the debt ceiling. Raising tax rates is anti-growth and raising the debt ceiling is pro-government growth—and this is the Republican position?” Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), who is leaving the Senate next year to head the Heritage Foundation, has said Boehner should be worried about retaining his speakership.

Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.) is rumored to be mulling a potential challenge if a fiscal cliff compromise proves unpalatable to the conservative rank-and-file.

Some members are angry following an alleged “purge” of conservatives, some of whom lost positions on top committees.

“We’re not doing the best job we can do,” Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.), who lost his spot on the House Budget Committee, recently said of Boehner’s leadership. “We can do a lot better. We need leaders on both sides and we don’t have that right now.”

Other conservatives, such as Rep. Dave Schweikert (R., Ariz.), are looking to settle their differences with party leadership. And aides say the House GOP conference remains far more unified than commonly portrayed in the media.

“Some people are going to complain no matter what,” one aide said. “Most of them know what the speaker is up against and will have his back at the end of the day.”

Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), typically considered one of the more conservative members of the House, defended Boehner last week at a lunch forum hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

“I think the speaker is doing the best he can with what he has to work with, and he wants to get a deal,” King said.

First-term Rep. Raul Labrador (R., Idaho) and several other freshman Republicans echoed King. Boehner continues to enjoy significant support from members of the Republicans freshman class so often described in the media as “radical.”

“We’ve been through this before,” one conservative lawmaker said on background. “It may not be pretty, but they’ll probably get the votes they need.”

Leadership itself remains united, aides say, despite reports of dissension and rumors that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) is prepared to challenge Boehner for the speakership.

“This implication that there is breathing room within the leadership is not accurate,” said a senior GOP aide. “We’re all going into this with the same mindset.”

Boehner’s initial offer to the White House was notable in that it was cosigned by Cantor, majority whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), and chairman of major committees including former GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

Ryan helped leaders prepare charts detailing the federal government’s spending problem and remains an influential voice behind the scenes.

Aides acknowledge that this week is critical for determining whether a deal can be reached or if the country will instead march over the fiscal cliff.

“We’ll have a pretty good by the end of this week where things stand,” said the senior GOP aide. “Can’t really predict how members will react because there is no deal to sell at this point.”

House Republicans will meet Tuesday morning to discuss the state of the negotiations.

“There’s a frustration among average Americans,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.) said at forum hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

Huelskamp was recently stripped of his posts on the House Budget and Agriculture Committees, a move many suspect was in retaliation for his votes against Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) budget—because it did not balance fast enough—and other leadership-backed proposals.

Boehner has come under fire from conservative politicians and pundits for the alleged “purge” of fiscal hawks and for proposing as much as $800 billion in new revenue in an effort to reach an agreement with the White House. A majority of GOP lawmakers have signed a pledge to their constituents vowing not to support a tax increase.

“That’s still a tax increase, even if you don’t increase the rates,” Rep. John Fleming (R., La.) said of Boehner’s proposal, which raises revenues through reforms like deduction limits. “ The president has never offered any cuts in spending, never. So we feel like our speaker has already given more than we’ve gotten and to give anything more than that would be absurd.”

Fleming and other conservative House members joined Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) at a Capitol Hill press conference hosted by TeaParty.net to urge their colleagues to oppose any deal that raises taxes.

“The Republican Party is the party of limited government and low taxation,” Paul said. “I don’t think its time to change who we are and what we stand for.”

“The president would love for Republicans to violate their principles to admit that his failed economic policies are the result of bad tax policy,” Huelskamp said, predicting Democrats would retake the House in two years if Republicans voted to raise taxes.

Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.), who was also stripped of his Budget Committee post, said he would be “willing to consider anything,” including tax increases, as part a deal that would have a meaningful impact on the national debt.

“There is no deal on the table right now from either side that is a good deal for the American people,” he said. “This isn’t about who is liberal, who is conservative, this is about who is fighting for the American people.”

Amash did not hesitate to criticize Boehner, saying he disagrees with his colleagues who insisted the speaker was “doing the best he can.”

“We’re not doing the best job we can do. We can do a lot better,” he said. “We need leaders on both sides and we don’t have that right now.”

Rep. Jeff Landry (R., La.), who recently lost his seat to fellow GOP Rep. Charles Boustany, was more blunt.

“Any blame to go around is going to be squarely on his shoulders,” Landry said of Boehner. “A deal is going to be bad.”

Others were more supportive of Boehner.

“I have confidence the speaker will negotiate a good deal,” said Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) “I do not have confidence that the president will negotiate a good deal.”

Most agreed that President Obama is perfectly willing, if not deliberately planning, to go over the fiscal cliff and blame Republicans for the repercussions.

“The president is not interested in a deal,” Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) said. “I think the speaker is doing the best he can with what he has to work with and he wants to get a deal.”

Rep. Raul Labrador (R., Idaho) criticized the media for not focusing on President Obama’s refusal to cut spending.

“I think Republicans are willing to compromise, the problem is we’re compromising with ourselves,” he said. “I want to see real cuts.”

Labrador noted that President Obama had campaigned on reducing the deficit with a three-to-one ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. The president is asking for between $1.4 trillion and $1.6 trillion in tax increases, but has not proposed anything close to the $4 trillion to $5 trillion in spending cuts necessary to fulfill that ratio, Labrador said.

“He could actually get both if he was willing to negotiate [on spending],” he said. “I think right now he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to cut spending, he only wants to increase taxes.”

Conventional wisdom in Washington suggests that Republicans, humbled after their defeat in November, are willing to compromise on taxes and may even vote so that tax rates on the wealthy increase automatically on January 1.

Republican aides argue that a compromise could be easily agreed if the White House stopped stonewalling on specific spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

House GOP leaders have formally offered $800 billion in new revenue, combined with spending cuts and entitlement savings, a proposal that was loudly criticized by some conservative pundits and lawmakers. The White House immediately rejected the offer.

“We’re still waiting for the White House to identify what spending cuts the president is willing to make as part of the balanced approach that he promised the American people,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Tuesday. “The longer the White House slow walks this process, the closer our economy gets to the fiscal cliff.”

If Congress fails to act by the end of the year, a combination of tax increases and automatic spending cuts are scheduled to go into effect. The Congressional Budget Office warned this could lead to another recession and a surge in unemployment.

Republicans are in the difficult position of being forced to compromise on a politically popular policy—raising tax rates on high-income earners—that would have little substantive impact (about $40 billion a year) on the national debt and deficit, while seeking concessions from Democrats on an a less popular issue—entitlement reform—that nearly every independent economists agrees is essential to the long-term fiscal health of the country.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating last year in part because the budget agreement passed by Congress at the time called for “only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.”

Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the president’s 2010 fiscal commission, has urged members of his party to accept the necessity of spending cuts and entitlement reform.

“Even if you raise the top rates back to the Clinton rates, that only creates about $400 billion over 10 years. That’s $40 billion a year. We have a trillion dollar a year deficit,” Bowles said on Sunday. “We have to cut spending. … We have to slow the rate of growth of healthcare [spending].”

Boehner echoed this sentiment Tuesday during a speech on the House floor.

“Let’s be honest, we’re broke,” he said. “Even if we did exactly what the president wants, we would see red ink for as far as the eye can see. That’s not fixing our problem either.”

Former Obama economic advisers Austan Goolsbee and Peter Orszag have also argued that spending cuts and entitlement reform must be part of any meaningful budget deal.

Democrats, many of whom have expressed a willingness to “go over” the fiscal cliff, do not appear too eager to compromise on spending or entitlements.

“We are winning,” a senior Democratic aide told Politico. “We don’t have to give up on anything yet.”

President Barack Obama has at least given the impression he is willing to accept some changes to entitlement programs. Senior adviser David Plouffe has said Democrats “are going to have to do some tough things on spending and entitlements that means that they’ll criticized on by their left.”

However, the president has rarely backed up such rhetoric with substance.

Many of the proposals the White House has put forward are drawn from Obama’s most recent budget, which not a single Democrat supported.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and other independent experts panned that budget for failing to address adequately the nation’s debt problem and deal with entitlements.

“[The president’s] proposals would barely stabilize the debt—and at too high a level,” MacGuineas said in a statement. “I also worry that this plan doesn’t contain enough deficit reduction or entitlement reform.”

The White House has all but admitted it has no viable solution to reform programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are primary drivers of the long-term debt problem.

“We’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) in February. “What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

Even if Obama really was eager to reform entitlements, he faces strong opposition from members of his own party and an army of left-wing client groups such as labor unions and the AARP, many of which were represented as the first White House meeting the president hosted following his reelection.

“We urge you to reject changes to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security that would cut benefits, shift costs to states, alter the structure of these critical programs or force vulnerable populations to bear the burden of deficit-reduction efforts,” a group of Democratic Senators wrote in a letter to the president.

Some Democratic lawmakers are beginning to voice their opposition to various entitlement changes, such as means-testing and an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, rumored to be on the table in the fiscal cliff negotiations.

Others, such as Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.), appear unwilling to admit that entitlement programs are even a problem.

“To blame the three programs that we’re talking about, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as the drivers of this deficit [is] a mistake,” Grijalva said on Sunday.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, is taking the White House to task for its “disappointing” effort to mislead the American people on the issues of spending and taxes.

He is particularly concerned with the president’s desire to undo the so-called sequester—$1.2 trillion in spending reductions (over a decade) scheduled to take effect next year as negotiated in the August 2011 agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

The proposal the White House put forward last week called for doing just that.

Sessions has previously urged lawmakers of both parties to abide by that agreement and ensure that the sequester or a commensurate amount of spending reduction is kept in place.

Obama’s proposal also called for $1.6 trillion in new taxes and additional spending totaling nearly $600 billion over the next decade—$1.8 trillion if you count the eliminated sequester. Additionally, the White House claims to support about $600 billion in spending cuts and entitlement savings.

Republicans roundly dismissed the offer as unserious.

The White House proposal, which was largely based on the president’s unpopular budget, contains a net spending increase of more than $1 trillion, according to Sessions.

That includes $50 billion in new stimulus spending, $26 billion to extend unemployment insurance, and $100 billion to extend the payroll tax holiday. On top of that, eliminating the sequester and paying for the so-called “doc fix”—restoring Medicare reimbursements to physicians—would cost about $1.6 trillion for a total of $1.8 trillion.

Factor in the $600 billion in savings the White House claims to support, and the president’s proposal boils down to a $1.6 trillion tax increase coupled with $1.2 trillion in new spending for deficit reduction totaling just $400 billion over the next decade.

That is equal to about one third of last year’s budget deficit and just 0.025 percent of the current national debt. The Congressional Budget Office reported Friday that the federal deficit for the first two months of fiscal year 2013 reached $292 billion.

The American people should take note, Sessions argued on the Senate floor Thursday.

“I would ask the American people, when you read that Congress was considering—and you’ve heard the president advocate—more taxes, did you not assume that that money would be used to reduce the deficit we have?” he said.

Obama has been vague as to why he wants to raise taxes although he has been clear in his desire to do so.

He wants to use the revenue to “reduce our deficit in a balanced, responsible way” but also to spend it on “investments.”

However, the president’s plan is heavy on “investment” and light on “balance.” The plan achieves 100 percent of its deficit reduction ($400 billion) by raising taxes in addition to calling for a net $1.2 trillion in new spending.

Sessions contends the president is trying to “confuse the American people” into supporting a plan they otherwise might find troublesome. He doubts most Americans would favor a plan that raises taxes by a significant amount yet fails to reign in federal spending.

Americans oppose new stimulus spending by an overwhelming 62 to 19 percent margin, according to a recent Rasmussen poll.

A survey conducted on behalf of the liberal think tank Third Way found that 95 percent of Obama voters view the federal deficit as a problem and were split 41 percent to 41 percent as to whether it should be reduced mostly through spending cuts or mostly tax increases. Just five percent said they favored reducing the deficit with tax increases alone.

“At some point, we’ve got to stop spending money,” said a Republican aide. “The Americans know this. The president needs to get on the same page.”

“We can’t sit here and negotiate with ourselves,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If the president doesn’t agree with our proposal and our outlines, I think he’s got an obligation to send one to Congress.”

Republican leaders were taken aback this week when the White House swiftly rejected a GOP offer based on a proposal outlined by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the president’s 2010 deficit commission.

The proposed framework included $800 billion in new revenue through tax reform—eliminating or capping deduction for wealthy earners—and was criticized by conservative lawmakers and pundits as too generous.

“What we put forward was by our estimates a very fair proposal, and by some conservative estimates was too fair,” said one House leadership aide. “We’re not excited about the revenue, but we know that we’re not getting everything we want. There’s no rational reason for Obama to reject it.”

Boehner issued a statement slamming Obama for “shifting the goal posts” by rejecting the “balanced approach” to deficit reduction he claims to want.

The House leadership aide said a deal to avert the fiscal cliff would be “fairly easy to do” if the president would stop changing his position “every 8 hours or so.”

“He is all over the map,” the aide said. “If we were negotiating with the Obama of six weeks ago, or six days ago, we might be able to get something done.”

Republican leaders scoffed last week at an opening proposal from the White House largely based on the president’s most recent budget, which was unanimously rejected by Democrats in both chambers of Congress.

“If you look at the plans that the White House has talked about thus far, they couldn’t pass either house of the Congress,” Boehner said Wednesday.

When Republicans attempted to bring the White House plan up for a vote in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) objected. 

“If the president’s proposal was made in good faith, Democrats should be eager to vote for it,” the Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said. “So I’m surprised the majority leader just declined the chance for them to support it with their votes.” 

Meanwhile, negotiations appear to have stalled.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said, “nothing is going on” in terms of meetings with the White House because the president is unwilling to have “specific discussions” about cutting spending.

He later announced that the House would not formally adjourn “until a credible solution to the fiscal cliff has been found.”

The next 72 hours are “critical,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and provide “an opportunity for the president to lead.”

Boehner told reporters he would be “available at any moment to sit down with the president.”

He also dismissed the idea that Republicans were out of line with public opinion by refusing to raise tax rates on high earners.

“The revenues we’re putting on the table are going to come from—guess who? The rich,” Boehner said.

Obama has insisted that no deal is possible unless Republicans agree to raise revenue through higher tax rates.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the administration was “absolutely” willing to go over the fiscal cliff if Republicans refuse to cave on this issue.

“There’s no prospect in an agreement that doesn’t involve the rates going up on the top 2 percent of the wealthiest,” he said.

Other leading Democrats, such as Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), also suggested that raising tax rates on all Americans is preferable to keeping current rates in place for the wealthy.

GOP denounced such rhetoric as counterproductive.

“An obsession to raise taxes is not going to solve the problem,” Cantor said. “We can’t just keep borrowing money and raising taxes and expect the problem to go away.”

Aides dismissed rumors of a so-called GOP “doomsday plan,” whereby House Republicans would vote “present” on a bill to extend current tax rates on families earning less than $250,000 a year. It would essentially give Obama what he wants, but some argue that doing so would diminish his political leverage in future negotiations.

“I don’t understand where that’s coming from, we’re not planning for it at all,” one aide said. “That’s a gimmick. We’re working toward an actual solution.”

However, the aide acknowledged “things could change” as a deadline for a deal approaches, but added: “If [Obama] is waiting for us to cave [on tax rates] he’s going to be waiting for a long, long time.”

“We can’t sit here and negotiate with ourselves,” House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told reporters Wednesday. “If the president doesn’t agree with our proposal and our outlines, I think he’s got an obligation to send one to Congress.”

The White House swiftly rejected a Republican offer this week based on a proposal originally outlined by Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the president’s 2010 deficit commission.

House leadership drew heat from conservatives for proposing the offer, which included $800 billion in new revenue through tax reform.

Republican leaders similarly scoffed at an opening proposal from the White House largely based on the president’s most recent budget, which was unanimously rejected by Democrats in both chambers of Congress.

“If you look at the plans that the White House has talked about thus far, they couldn’t pass either house of the Congress,” Boehner said Wednesday.

He dismissed the idea that Republicans were out of line with public opinion by refusing to raise tax rates on high earners.

“The revenues we’re putting on the table are going to come from—guess who? The rich,” Boehner said.

Obama has insisted that no deal is possible unless Republican agree to raise revenue through higher tax rates.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said, “nothing is going on” in terms of negotiations with the White House because the president is unwilling to have “specific discussions” about cutting spending.

“An obsession to raise taxes is not going to solve the problem,” he said. “We can’t just keep borrowing money and raising taxes and expect the problem to go away.”

The next 72 hours are “critical,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and provide “an opportunity for the president to lead.”

“I’ll be here and I’ll be available at any moment to sit down with the president,” Boehner said.