In addition, a small business group, the American Sustainable Business Council, is pushing Congress through a massive letter writing campaign to raise taxes on the wealthy, insisting that a tax increase on the top wage earners will not hurt job creation.

"Huge tax cuts for the richest Americans have not trickled down to increase small- and medium-sized business investment, broad-based consumer purchasing power or job creation," the form letter says.

Regardless of all of this outside pressure, it's still up to Congress and the president to solve the fiscal cliff problem with just over a month until the January 1 deadline. But, as Durbin said on ABC Sunday, "Unfortunately, for the last 10 days, with the House and Congress gone for the Thanksgiving recess ... much progress hasn't been made."

Even though gridlock has been the order of business in recent years in Washington, Congress always seems to act when there's a deadline for political disaster (remember the seemingly regular 11th hour aversions to government shutdowns?).

Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., is insisting that his colleagues not kick "the can down the road" on dealing with the fiscal cliff.

"The fiscal cliff is a deadline of the 112th Congress's making," Corker wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Sunday. "It is our responsibility to solve these problems now."