Boehner Offers Some Tax Increases to Avoid Fiscal Cliff, But No Specifics; Negotiations Still Stalled Over Cuts

House Speaker John Boehner has signaled that he may be willing to raise taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 a year.

Politico reports o Wednesday that in private negotiations, Boehner agreed to revenue increases above the $800 million already offered by Republicans, as long as Democrats agreed to more cuts to social programs.

That will be impossible without raising some tax rates, an issue that until now seemed impassable.

In return, President Obama has revised downward his request for additional revenue, which now stands at $1.4 trillion, but he standing firm on entitlements. He has offered $600 million in cuts, but has yet to go farther than that.

After a meeting behind closed doors with President Obama on the contentious fiscal cliff over the weekend, House Speaker John Boehner broke his silence on the negotiations on Tuesday, and saying he is displeased with the progress.

Where are the president's spending cuts?" Boehner said. "When is the president going to get serious?"

"The longer the White House slow walks this process, the closer our economy gets to the fiscal cliff," he said.

Details of the weekend meeting are leaking out, and the White House contends that it is the Republicans who aren't being serious about the negotiations.

"The irony of this is that the White House offer had very specific cuts, the GOP counteroffer had almost none," tweeted White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi shot back at Boehner during the House session. "Where are the revenues?" she asked. "The Republicans refuse to touch one hair on the head of the wealthiest people in our country."

At issue is the country's federal deficit, which stands at about $1 trillion for 2012. The Republicans and Democrats must reach a compromise to close the deficit and begin shrinking the federal debt-currently around $16 trillion-in order to avoid the fiscal cliff, a series of automatic tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts that go into effect on the first of the year.

The Bush era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and Republicans want to extend them indefinitely. President Obama and the Democrats also want to extend them, but only for the 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year.

The wealthy, they say, should shoulder more of the financial burden. Republicans say that punishes success and will hurt the economy.

Republicans have agreed that revenue needs to increase, though they are insisting that new funds come only from closing tax loopholes and deductions, most of which are very popular with the middle class, e.g. the child tax credit, the mortgage interest deduction and deductions for charitable giving to non-profit organizations or churches.

Both sides also agree that spending cuts are necessary, but Republicans want to preserve funding for defense and the military, while Democrats want to Social Security, Medicare and health care off the table, and only small cuts to social and entitlement programs.

Obama has been adamant that no deal will pass muster unless it includes a tax hike for wealthier Americans, back to the levels they paid during the boom years of the Clinton presidency.