(MCT) — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner inched closer to a solution to avert a looming fiscal crisis Tuesday with a deal that would fail to meet one of the president’s top campaign pledges of raising taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

The White House and Republicans in the House of Representatives traded barbs publicly throughout the day, but privately the two sides weren’t that far apart on a compromise that could avoid a series of drastic spending cuts and tax increases that would threaten to push the nation back into a recession.