Del. congressman talks fiscal cliff

Rep. John Carney, D-Del, is weighing in on the country’s looming fiscal cliff as the President and congressional leaders meet on the issue this afternoon.

As a Democrat in the Republican-ruled House of Representatives, Carney said the minority has been unhappy with House Speaker John Boehner’s approach to dealing with fiscal cliff negotiations.

“It’s been very disappointing that Speaker Boehner has not been able to sell his position,” said Carney. “Basically he’s taken the negotiations with the President to his caucus, he had to go back to what he called ‘Plan B’ and wasn’t even able to get enough votes for that. So that’s been a little bit discouraging. Maybe it’s time for the negotiations between the President and Republicans to occur between him and members of the Senate and then they could set the table for an agreement that would be then voted on in the House.”

Carney said he hopes today’s meeting brings less blaming and more working together from both sides of the aisle to reach a compromise.

“What I’ve heard from some of the leaders sounds more like trying to protect one side or the other from taking the blame,” said Carney. “People are going to be upset and they should be upset; we should get our work done. It’s not easy to come to an agreement on things around which you don’t have an agreement so we’ll see what happens, but I’m hoping we’ll see something optimistic coming out of the meeting this afternoon.”

The deadline for the Bush tax cuts are set to expire Dec. 31, which many economists say would push the economy back into a recession.