WASHINGTON: Senior congressional Republicans said on Sunday they see a chance for a broad deal with President Barack Obama on deficit reduction and reining in spending on vast government programs like Medicare and one senator signalled potential flexibility on taxes.
Obama, who met with lawmakers of both parties last week, has been calling for more tax increases on the wealthiest taxpayers, coupled with new spending cuts, to help curb budget deficits that have exceeded $1 trillion in each of the past four years.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, and Obama failed to come to terms at the end of last year on an agreement to get America's fiscal house in order.
Such a deal could include spending cuts, tax reform and curbing spending on costly entitlement programs like the Social Security retirement program and the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.
Speaking on the "Fox News Sunday" program, Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said: "There, by the way, is a chance on a deal. I know the president is saying the right things. And we have an opportunity over the next four to five months."
Asked on the ABC program "This Week" if prospects for a "grand bargain" were dead, Boehner said, "I don't know whether we can come to a big agreement. If we do, it'll be between the two parties on Capitol Hill.
Hopefully, we can go to conference on these budgets and hope springs eternal in my mind."
Boehner said that while the United States does not have "an immediate debt crisis" one is looming because entitlement programs are not sustainable in their current form. "They're going to go bankrupt," he said.
Asked how long the country had to solve these problems, Boehner said, "Nobody knows where this is. It could be a year or two years, three years, four years."
Obama has engaged in a couple of weeks of outreach to lawmakers some have called it a "charm offensive" - but the prospects of a large deficit reduction deal by midyear remained unclear.
Corker underscored the importance of reform in the huge entitlement programs like Medicare.
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