Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday there is still a "chasm" at the heart of talks to reach a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” as the year-end deadline approaches.
"There still is a chasm there," Durbin said on CBS's Face the Nation. "There's work to be done and not much time left."
But Durbin sounded a tone of optimism in terms of striking a deal in the next two days.
"I've been around Washington long enough to know that it takes a deadline, it takes a lot of sweat and a lot of worry," Durbin said. "And people reach a point where they finally say, 'Alright, let's try to find the way through this.'"
"It’s happened before," he added. "It can happen again."
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who also appeared on the program agreed that both sides are "far apart."
"I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen," he said.
But Coburn added, "The odds are that we have not seen the leadership on either side of the aisle to solve this problem and why would we think that we're gonna see the leadership in the next 24 hours to solve the problem?"
Coburn said while there are "a lot of disadvantages" with going over the fiscal cliff, there are also some advantages.
"One of the advantages will be that the American people are going to see what the real cost of their government is -- the actual real cost -- for both the very wealthy. The very, very low will have minimal impact on them, it's about $200 a year," Coburn added.
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