WASHINGTON (AP) — Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced-budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.

The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to calls at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation’s looming debt crisis.

President Obama and a startling number of Republican senators lauded a deficit-reduction plan put forward earlier in the day by a bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators that calls for $1 trillion in what sponsors delicately called “additional revenue” and some critics swiftly labeled as higher taxes...

OK, so you wake up from a long drunken bender and discover that you burned through every bit of your money, raided your retirement savings and maxed out all your credit cards with debts your grandchildren will be paying for the rest of their lives. What do you do?

A) Stop spending, pay off your debts and figure out some way to never go on a drunken bender again where you spend all of your money and sentence your grandchildren to the modern day debtor’s prison.

B) Keep spending money you don’t have, apply for new credit cards and don’t do anything that would keep this from happening again for fear that it might make the credit card companies nervous about your financial stability...

The House of Representatives has approved the GOP's 'Cut, Cap and Balance' plan with a vote of 234 to 190.

The bill imposes caps on federal spending as a percentage of GDP. It also allows for an increase in the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion in exchange for both the Senate and House approving a balanced budget amendment.

House Speaker John Boehner played a muted role in public during the day, but later applauded the passage of the plan.

“House Republicans are the only ones to put forward and pass a real plan that will create a better environment for private-sector job growth by stopping Washington from spending money it doesn’t have and preventing tax hikes on families and small businesses," he said in a statement. "The White House hasn’t said what it will cut"...

WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders are giving the tea party a chance to do things its way in the latest chapter in the saga over increasing the government's borrowing limit and avoiding a first-ever default.

The chamber will vote Tuesday on a "cut, cap and balance" plan to let the government borrow another $2.4 trillion -- but only after big and immediate spending cuts and adoption by Congress of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

The plan is doomed in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the White House has promised a veto...

The debate over the debt ceiling moves Monday from the backrooms of the White House to the halls of Congress, as the House and Senate take up dueling measures to grapple with the problem.

Though the White House says the president still wants a "big" deficit-reduction deal linked to a debt-ceiling increase, a solid week of bipartisan talks yielded nothing close to a compromise -- leaving members of Congress instead moving on to a couple of risky proposals.

House Republicans will act first, pushing their "cut, cap and balance" plan at a committee hearing late Monday afternoon. That plan would cut spending immediately and cap future spending as a percentage of GDP, while requiring Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment as a condition for raising the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion...

Tensions are flaring as lawmakers return to the negotiating table Thursday, after President Obama ended the last session by dressing down House Republican Leader Eric Cantor.

"Don't call my bluff," the president told Cantor, according to the GOP leader.

Democratic and Republican sources have offered several versions of the final moments of Wednesday's meeting -- by most accounts it ended on a low note, raising questions about whether negotiators can make any progress under increasing pressure to strike a deficit-reduction deal and raise the debt ceiling. A startling warning came Wednesday when credit rating agency Moody's said the U.S. government's impeccable credit rating was under review for a potential downgrade. The agency said the ongoing stalemate increased the risk of a first-ever default on the government's debt...

The debt limit debate is fundamentally about numbers.

For starters, there's $14.3 trillion. That's the current, statutory debt ceiling which the federal government is threatening to blow past on August 2.

Then there's $2.4 trillion. That's the potential figure by which experts believe Congress would have to increase the debt limit to get the government through the end of 2012. That also seems to be the total cost of spending cuts or revenue offsets that could be negotiated in any final debt limit agreement.

Finally there's $4 trillion. That's the amount of the broad, deficit reduction plan floated by President Obama late last week. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yanked that proposal off the table Saturday night after witnessing ferocious opposition from House Democrats...

Liberals and conservatives, on and off Capitol Hill, have sprung into action to urge lawmakers not to cede ground in the ongoing deficit talks, complicating the latest marathon push to strike a deal and raise the debt ceiling.

President Obama and Vice President Biden plan to meet Tuesday afternoon with lawmakers from both parties, following up on back-to-back meetings since Sunday. The talks so far have failed to yield a compromise ahead of what the administration claims is an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

Their respective bases aren't making things any easier....

Flattering House Speaker John A. Boehner publicly, President Obama on Monday tried to reel in the reluctant Republican House leader to support the president’s goal of a large tax increase to help reduce deficits.

“I think Speaker Boehner has been very sincere about trying to do something big,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference, just before resuming debt talks with Mr. Boehner and other congressional leaders. “I think he’s a good man who wants to do right by the country.”

But Mr. Boehner sounded Monday like a man who wasn’t about to be wooed anymore...

President Obama's has offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 as part of a larger deficit-reduction package, a move sure to anger congressional Democrats who want to exclude entitlement programs from the ongoing talks.

Democrats already have criticized Republicans over proposed cuts to programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and with Obama showing he is open to program changes, some Democrats are taking a hard line.

"As long as the entitlement programs are part of a cut program, I can't support it," Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., told Fox News, calling such cuts a political and fiscal "mistake"...