This extraordinary session of the United States Senate began with a prayer, but adjourned without hope or a deal.
The day began with the president appearing in a pre-recorded interview on one the country's most influential political programs.
"Regardless of partisan differences, our top priority has to be to make sure that taxes on middle-class families do not go up," said President Obama.
Republicans say Barack Obama has refused to compromise.
"What we are seeing is a monumental failure of presidential leadership the President is the only person with a pen who can sign this," said John Barrasso.
The president says not so.
"The offers I've made to them have been so fair that a lot of Democrats are getting mad at me," said Mr Obama.
Some Democrats Senators are urging others to take one for the team.
"If there is an ultimate compromise, there will be parts of it that I find disgusting and reprehensible which I may have to swallow," said Democratic senator Dick Durbin.
House members have finally returned but few of them expect an eleventh hour deal.
"And we're going to be entrenched in hand to hand warfare beginning in January with the continuing resolution," said Republican congressman Tom Cole.
"I think the likelihood is that we go over the cliff. If we don't suspend the sequester and it looks like this very small deal may not even achieve that, then I'd have to a no vote," said Democratic congressman Jim Moran.
Now that America looks certain to drop off the fiscal cliff what will happen.
Tax goes up for every American worker, two million will lose unemployment benefits and $110 billion in government spending cuts will kick in.
In GDP terms that's a five percent impact on the US economy, enough to push it into recession.
Now there's 193 nation states in the world in dollar terms the fiscal cliff is big enough to completely wipe out the economies of the bottom one hundred.
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