By Peter Wallsten, Lori Montgomery and Scott Wilson, Published: March 17, 2012 WASHINGTON POST

Around 11 a.m. July 17, John A. Boehner, the House speaker, and Eric Cantor, the majority leader, had slipped through a side entrance, out of view from the bank of television cameras stationed near the front gate off Pennsylvania Avenue. The on-and-off secret negotiations were on again. They had resumed with a Friday meeting at the Capitol. And they seemed to be going so well by the time Obama returned from church that he invited Boehner and Cantor into the Oval Office to talk, just the three of them.

Cantor and Boehner brought their top aides, including Barry Jackson, the speaker’s chief of staff, who had worked in George W. Bush’s White House. When they reached Daley’s office, the Republicans were handed a four-page document that made changes, typed in red, to an offer Boehner had made two days earlier, during a secret meeting at the Capitol.

A lot of red ink, the Republicans thought. But the major elements of a bargain seemed to be falling into place: $1.2 trillion in agency cuts, smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, nearly $250 billion in Medicare savings achieved in part by raising the eligibility age. And $800 billion in new taxes.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html