Geithner Set for Talks on ‘Cliff’; Senator Sees ‘Standoff’ CNBC, FISCAL CLIFF, GEITHNER, OBAMA, Reuters | 29 Nov 2012 | 08:14 AM ET Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's chief negotiator in talks to avert the "fiscal cliff," will meet with congressional leaders on Thursday amid signs that the market-rattling uncertainty about the outcome could go down to the wire. "It is not going to happen soon," Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Senate's fourth-ranking Republican, said in a Fox Business News interview Wednesday evening of an agreement to avoid the tax hikes and spending cuts that will be triggered on Jan. 1 without an act of Congress. "I think right now" it's "a little bit of a standoff," Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Republican in the Democratic- controlled Senate, told CNN late Wednesday. The announced schedule of Geithner's meetings Thursday suggested relatively contained chats with Republicans rather than intensive negotiations. The Treasury secretary, accompanied by Obama's top legislative aide, Ron Nabors, is set to meet first with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid at about 10 a.m. EST, followed 45 minutes later by a session with Republican leaders of the House, including Speaker John A. Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, fresh off his Republican vice-presidential campaign, and the chairman of the House's tax writing Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp. |