US budget talks break down Negotiations between the White House and Republicans in the House of Representatives over the budget have broken down, shifting the focus to the Senate ahead of next week's deadline to lift the country's debt limit. John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker, told members in a meeting on Saturday morning on Capitol Hill that talks had stalled after the White House rejected his initial offer for a six-week hike in the debt ceiling and new budget talks to reopen the government. "Senate Republicans need to stand strong and fight," Eric Cantor, the Republican House Majority leader told the meeting. The House adjourned on Saturday morning, and will not reconvene until Monday evening. However negotiations immediately ran into obstacles in the Senate, where Democrats rejected a potential compromise brokered by Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, with help from Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, fearing that it gave too much away. The Senate also blocked on a 53-45 vote a Democratic plan that would have raised the debt ceiling until 2014, with no strings attached. Motions need a threshold of 60 votes to proceed. The White House criticised the Senate vote, with spokesman Jay Carney saying: "It is unfortunate that the commonsense, clean debt-limit increase proposed by Senate Democrats was refused a yes-or-no vote." A public backlash against the logjam in Washington had pushed Republicans to moderate their hardline stance on the budget, raising hopes of a deal with the White House and Democrats. Senior Republicans had been shaken by an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released late on Thursday showing the lowest ratings for the party since the survey started in 1989, adding urgency to their efforts to reach a settlement. Talks foundered, however, after the White House opposed a six-week extension of the debt ceiling, and linking that issue to the budget negotiations that lie behind the partial government shutdown. Twelve days into a partial government shutdown, and days before the country hits its statutory borrowing limit, Republican demands that the president cut funding for, or delay his signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare, have been pushed off centre stage. But with many Tea Party-backed Republicans in the House insisting on maintaining a hardline on both the budget and Obamacare, Mr Boehner has stepped back to allow Senate talks to proceed. Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas Republican, said reports that a compromise was under discussion about the party's initial demands on Obamacare were extremely worrying. "If true, such an abandonment of conservative principles would dispirit, dismay and anger the entire conservative base of the Republican party," he said. For any of my colleagues pushing such a deal, it would seriously jeopardise their future chances of becoming elected leadership in the House. Negotiations are expected to continue in the Senate, led by Harry Reid, the Democratic Majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader. The outlines of a deal are far from clear, and any agreement will also need the support of the White House and Democrats in the House, whose votes will in all likelihood be needed to pass it. The president had refused to negotiate over a government shutdown, and in the shadow of the looming debt ceiling deadline, a tough stand has also been taken by Mr Reid. When asked at a Institute of International Finance conference in Washington on Saturday what would happen if the US defaulted, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan chief executive said "you don't want to know" and added that panic would ensue. Deutsche Bank co-chief executive Anshu Jain echoed Mr Dimon, saying that there wouldn't be life after a US default because it would be a "rapidly spreading disease." Bank executives expected futures markets to be down Sunday evening, when Asian markets open, if politicians don't reach an agreement by then