Goldman Sachs - Ceos To Seek Cliff Deal At White House - On Capitol Hill - Businessweek

Corporate leaders pressing for a solution to the so-called fiscal cliff will make their case at the White House and the Capitol a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lamented the lack of progress toward a deal.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ( ) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein is among the executives scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama today. The president is trying to enlist business support for his campaign to extend tax cuts for middle- income Americans while letting rates rise for top earners.

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, plans to meet separately today with Blankfein and other CEOs. Congress and the president are negotiating on ways to avoid the cliff, consisting of $607 billion in tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin in January.

The meetings with Obama and Boehner, the two chief negotiators, come a day after Reid said Democrats and Republicans have made little headway.

There s been little progress with the Republicans, which is a disappointment to me, Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters yesterday in Washington.

Following a Nov. 16 White House meeting between congressional leaders and Obama, Republicans backed away from earlier openness to considering new tax revenue as part of a year-end deal to avert the cliff, Reid said.

Happy Talk

They talked some happy talk about doing revenues, but we only have a couple weeks to get something done, Reid said. So we have to get away from the happy talk and start talking about specific things.

U.S. stocks extended losses as Reid spoke. The Standard & Poor s (SPX) 500 Index fell 0.5 percent to 1,398.94 yesterday in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 89.24 points, or 0.7 percent, to 12,878.13.

Other chief executive officers scheduled to meet with Obama include Frank Blake of Home Depot Inc. ( ), Ken Frazier of Merck & Co., Muhtar Kent of Coca-Cola Co. ( ), Douglas Oberhelman of Caterpillar Inc. and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! Inc.

Chief executives invited to meet with Boehner include Oberhelman, Thomas Wilson of Allstate Corp. (ALL ), David Cote of Honeywell International Inc. (HON ) and Mark Bertolini of Aetna Inc. (AET )

Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, also are meeting today with some of the business leaders.

Face to Face

While both parties meet with various stakeholders, Obama and congressional leaders have yet to schedule another face-to- face session. A Democratic congressional aide said Nov. 26 that Obama is delaying inviting the congressional leadership back to the White House this week, as he had planned, because staff- level efforts had made little progress. The aide wasn t authorized to discuss the talks publicly.

Toy Factory Turning Off Package Deal