WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The White House and congressional Republican leadership on Monday stepped up a blame game over failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach an agreement on a long-term debt-reduction plan.

Both parties began to trade barbs over the weekend on a series of talk shows. The blame game got intensified Monday just hours before the committee announced their failure in an afternoon statement.

White House press secretary Jay Carney defended President Barack Obama's hands-off approach in the process of negotiations, saying the president had "put forward a comprehensive proposal that went well beyond the 1.2 trillion dollars mandated by that act and was a balanced approach to deficit reduction and getting our long-term debt under control."

Carney was referring to a proposal the president put forward for cutting 3.4-to-3.6 trillion dollars from the federal deficit.

"In the end, it comes down to a decision by Republicans that they are unwilling to do what the American people say they believe should be done, which is ask the very wealthiest Americans, millionaires and billionaires, to pay a little bit extra so that we can achieve the kind of deficit reduction and long-term debt control that we need," Carney said at the White House daily briefing.

The 12-member committee, established in accordance with the summer deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling, was charged with coming up with a plan to cut federal deficit by at least 1.2 trillion dollars over the next decade. Failure to do so by Wednesday would trigger cross-the-board spending cuts of the same amount starting 2013, including both defense and non-defense budgets.

House Speaker John Boehner's office sent out a memo Monday saying the supercommittee "was unable to reach agreement because President Obama and Washington Democrats insisted on dramatic tax hikes on American job creators, which would make our economy worse. "

The sticking points in the process of the supercommitte negotiations were almost the same as in debt-ceiling talks this summer, with Republicans rejecting any proposal that includes tax increases while Democrats opposed to major cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.