The White House and Senate Republicans “are closing in on a budget compromise that would raise tax rates on couples making more than $450,000 a year, increase taxes on large inheritances and extend unemployment benefits for a year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“However, with the New Year’s deadline approaching, negotiators were hung up on how, if at all, to postpone the $110 billion in spending cuts due to take effect Jan. 2.”

The biggest wildcard, of course, remains whether House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) could get such a compromise through the House of Representatives.

Andrew Sullivan: “This is the middle of a titanic struggle, not the end.”

“It was kind of a B-flat. If you know music, you know what I mean.'”

— Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), quoted by Politico, on the tone inside the GOP caucus meeting on the fiscal cliff negotiations.

A “frantic round of late-night negotiations” between Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “moved the Senate close to a deal to stave off hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts that would begin to kick in on Tuesday,” the New York Times reports.

First Read: “From what we understand, McConnell wants a deal — he wants to get this tax issue off the table. So they are close. The question is whether Boehner would bring such a deal to the floor and whether it could pass in time. But if a Biden-McConnell deal gets 70 or more votes in the Senate, Boehner might not have no choice but to bring the legislation to the House floor.”

Wonk Wire: Will fiscal cliff negotiations continue into 2013?

John Avlon: “If this supposedly liberated lame-duck Congress can’t agree on basic outlines of a grand bargain agreement that has been debated in detail for the past two years, why should we believe that the next Congress will have more success? Immigration reform, gun reforms — those more difficult debates will be effectively DOA from day one. This is self-government committing economic suicide, putting ideological absolutism ahead of solving problems. The idea of a productive lame-duck session after the contentious election has been erased. Hopefully, Senators Reid and McConnell will surprise us with some kind of patchwork compromise by the self-imposed deadline of 3 p.m. today, but they have been keeping rumors of progress to themselves.”

“This congressional Kabuki is killing us, because it masks a more fundamental problem. Congress seems unable to act unless confronted with a crisis at the last minute — and even then, they can’t agree on anything significant or substantive that actually deals with long-term problems. Maybe they should just stay on vacation and spare us the rhetoric. But as the clock ticks to New Year’s, they should have a guilty conscience that might inspire a genuine resolution to reform. Because they created this crisis and now seem unable to fix it. We’re the ones who will feel the pain. It is an epic act of self-sabotage.”

“They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way, but the way they’re behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected. That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme.”

— President Obama, on Meet the Press, blaming Republicans for failing to reach a deal to avert the fiscal cliff.

BuzzFeed: “It’s difficult to find a Republican operative who is willing to say on the record that going over the fiscal cliff next Tuesday is a good idea. Provoking a crisis is bad politics: Republicans are resigned to taking the blame. And it’s bad for their policy agenda: They will likely be cornered into a broader tax hike than the best deal they could get from President Barack Obama today, and with none of the spending cuts that might now be on the table.”

“And yet, the dominant emotion among most Republicans here is one of sheer resignation.”

Said one prominent Republican: “It’s a shit show. Tax rates are going to go up on everyone, and we’re going to get the blame.”