Washington – The Senate is moving to cast away a budget cutting plan passed by the Republican-controlled House, clearing the way for increasingly urgent government talks over raising the nation's debt ceiling. President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner searched once more for an ambitious $4 trillion grand bargain, but officials said wide differences remained.

Less than two weeks from an Aug. 2 deadline that could precipitate a first-ever government default, the continuing Obama-Boehner talks kept alive the possibility of substantial deficit reduction that would combine cuts in spending on major benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid and revenue increases through a broad overhaul of the tax code.

"We have the opportunity to do something big and meaningful," Obama declared in a newspaper opinion piece. And from the Capitol, Boehner said House Republicans were prepared to compromise and prodded Obama: "The ball continues to be in the president's court"...

Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives are considering an appropriations bill that would, in part, restore the Mexico City Policy preventing the funding of groups that promote or perform abortions overseas.

The policy has been a central tenant of pro-life foreign policy during Republican administrations, but pro-abortion presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both scrapped it during their first weeks in office.

As Washington continues to grapple for a way out of its debt dilemma, a separate bipartisan budget plan by the Senate's "Gang of Six" appears to be losing momentum.

Critics complained that the proposal contains larger tax increases than advertised.

While the plan would lower the top tax rate from 35 percent to somewhere between 23 and 29 percent, it also targets some cherished tax breaks...

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...

The House of Representatives is considering its own plan to raise the debt ceiling today: the "cut, cap and balance" plan. Republicans who support it say it's needed policy to right the country's financial situation. Democrats say it would dismantle the government's safety net and change the nature of the country. So what is it?

Their plan, which would cut $111 billion in federal spending this year, would also set mandatory caps for federal spending as a percentage of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. Those caps would start at 22.5 percent and go down to 19.9 percent by the end of the decade and stay there for the foreseeable future. The plan would also require a balanced budget amendment be passed by the Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

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...

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...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that Republicans will not sign off on an increase in the debt limit that raises taxes.

“The president asked us early this year to increase the debt limit for our country with no changes in spending and no changes in terms of how we spend the American people’s money,” Boehner said at a Capitol Hill news conference with other Republican leaders.

“I made clear that we would not increase the debt limit without real cuts in spending and real changes to the way we spend the American people’s money," said Boehner. "I also said that we would have to cut spending by more than what we would increase the debt ceiling. As these conversations continue, those principles continue to be in place"...