The House Republican leadership on Monday offered up a $2.2 trillion deficit reduction plan that would combine tax reform, discretionary spending cuts and increasing the eligibility age for Medicare and other entitlement programs in an effort to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”

House Speaker John Boehner responded to President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction plan – one Boehner has called “nonsense” – by offering a plan based on the Democratic co-chairman of Obama’s deficit reduction commission.

Republicans based the plan on ideas presented to Congress in November 2011 by Democrat Erskine Bowles, who served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and co-chaired with former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson a presidential commission that produced in 2010 a plan to slash the deficit.

“This is by no means an adequate long-term solution, as resolving our long-term fiscal crisis will require fundamental entitlement reform,” Boehner and other House Republican leaders wrote in a letter to Obama sent Monday. “Indeed the Bowles plan is exactly the kind of imperfect, but fair middle ground that allows us to avert the fiscal cliff without hurting our economy and destroying jobs. We believe it warrants immediate consideration.”

Specifically, their plan calls for:

* $800 billion in revenue through tax reform,

* $900 billion through mandatory spending

* $300 billion of other discretionary savings.

But the plan doesn’t raise tax rates and holds out the possibility of lowering them. Instead, House Republicans would generate new revenue through “pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates.”

A senior GOP aide said that while the proposal did not mention $1.2 trillion in sweeping, across-the-board cuts set to take effect Jan. 1, their plan included “ample savings” to eliminate the need for those cuts.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer assailed the Boehner offer, saying it “does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve.’’

“While the president is willing to compromise to get a significant, balanced deal and believes that compromise is readily available to Congress, he is not willing to compromise on the principles of fairness and balance that include asking the wealthiest to pay higher rates,’’ Pfeiffer said in a statement.

Boehner himself had criticized a plan presented by Obama last week, saying it essentially was Obama’s own budget plan from last year, which neither passed the House nor the Senate.

Columbus-area Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Genoa Twp., said that a solution to the fiscal cliff won’t be easy.

“I wouldn’t frame it in terms of happiness,” he said. “I’d frame it in terms of what needs to be done.”

He said Boehner made a “good faith effort” at negotiations by agreeing to new revenue and Obama’s response last Friday was “unserious.”

“Our members understand that the president won,” he said. “He has to understand that House Republicans are still in control of the House and we have the second highest majority since the 1930s. We get to negotiate. He doesn’t get to be king, nor do we get to be king. “

Boehner, meanwhile, called the Republicans’ plan “a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House.”

“Going over the cliff would hurt the economy, hurt job creators in our country,” Boehner said during a brief appearance at a briefing on the GOP proposal. He called the White House’s proposal – presented to Boehner and congressional leaders last Friday — a “la-la land offer” that could not pass the House or the Senate.

He said he did not plan to call Obama to present the proposal, saying “a letter is appropriate,” but when asked if he’d be attending a White House Christmas party Monday night, he said he would.

“I might run into him,” Boehner said of Obama. “You never know.”