With markets waking, Washington’s debt standoff worsened significantly Sunday amid recriminations and distrust just eight days before the real threat on an unprecedented default. 
 
 Having broken off talks last Friday with the White House, Speaker John Boehner is still trying to achieve much of the same $3 trillion package in a two-stage process tied to raising the debt ceiling in increments of $900 billion first and then about $1.6 trillion next year. 
 
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 But on the eve of a Monday Republican conference, Boehner’s would-be Senate partner, Majority Leader Harry Reid, was called to the White House on Sunday and then came out swinging, accusing the speaker of taking a “my-way-or-the-highway approach” that could never be acceptable to the Senate nor to President Barack Obama. 
 
 “Tonight, talks broke down,” Reid (D-Nev.) said. “Speaker Boehner’s plan, no matter how he tries to dress it up, is simply a short-term plan, and is, therefore, a non-starter in the Senate and with the president.” 
 
 Reid said he had begun drafting his own $2.7 trillion deficit reduction plan and urged Boehner to join him. But Republicans reacted angrily, saying Reid had been working with them Sunday afternoon up to the White House meeting and the sudden change-of-heart was dictated by Obama, jilted by Boehner but a major force in the whole struggle. 
 
 “Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the president said no,” said a Republican aide familiar with the talks. A second leadership aide put it more bluntly, saying the speaker had 218 votes in the House for his proposal, while Reid and Obama don’t yet have 60 votes for any alternative in the Senate. 
 
 Indeed, since breaking off talks with the White House, Boehner has kept open lines to Obama, and the two men talked Sunday. But at this stage, the Boehner-Reid working relationship may be even more crucial, and in a conference call with Republicans on Sunday, Boehner had seemed to give a nod to Reid by emphasizing that any legislative strategy has to pass the Senate as well. 
 
 “We’ve seen this coming all year long. But here’s the challenge: To stop [Obama], we need a vehicle that can pass in both houses,” Boehner said. 
 
 “I do think there is a path,” Boehner said, still holding out hope of filing a bill Monday for House floor action Wednesday, “but it’s gonna require us to stand together as a team. It’s gonna require some of you to make some sacrifices. If we stand together as a team, our leverage is maximized and they have to deal with us. If we’re divided, our leverage gets minimized.” 
 
 Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) met for an hour Sunday evening with the president at the White House, and the Nevada Democrat must walk a fine line between working with Boehner and keeping faith with the president and Pelosi in the mounting crisis. ||||| Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is in active negotiation with the White House on a debt ceiling deal, and Democrats agreed late Saturday night to postpone a partisan-tinged cloture vote to give time for both sides to find a compromise. 
 
 “There are many elements to be finalized, and there is still a distance to go before any arrangement can be completed,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “But I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work.” 
 
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 “I’m glad to see this move toward cooperation and compromise. I hope it bears fruit.” 
 
 Just hours before Reid had sparred on the floor with McConnell over the seriousness of his efforts, and Reid’s change of tone — and tactics — suggested that real progress had been made. “We’re getting close,” said one GOP leadership aide, with knowledge of the discussions. 
 
 “In the category of getting serious, I have spoken to both the president and the vice president within the last hour,” McConnell had told reporters earlier in day in a joint appearance with Speaker John Boehner. “We are now fully engaged, the speaker and I, with the one person in America out of 307 million people who can sign a bill into law. I’m confident and optimistic that we’re going to get an agreement in the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the American people.” 
 
 Boehner echoed McConnell’s statement, saying he believed that “we are going to be able to come to some sort of agreement.” But the speaker appears to have had no contact himself with President Barack Obama Saturday, while McConnell spoke to the president and reached out to Biden, after which the two men engaged in at least four back-and-forth phone calls through the day. 
 
 The biggest two outstanding issues are the Republicans’ insistence on “dollar-for-dollar” deficit reductions –without new tax revenues—to match any increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority. And second, what enforcement mechanism is best to ensure that a new joint House-Senate committee will be able to come up with an estimated $1.6 trillion in savings by the end of this year. 
 
 Boehner has said that if the panel fails to meet its target, Obama can’t raise the debt ceiling— a concession that the president refuses to make since it only means more instability six months from now. The White House wants to substitute some alternative trigger that would still be action-forcing but not a threat to the whole economy. Biden is exploring options with McConnell, but even if a compromise is found, the cuts demanded by Boehner now are far larger than what the speaker had been willing to accept from Obama just last week. 
 
 One trigger option that has gained favor would impose across-the-board cuts on spending with the idea of inflicting enough pain that both parties would have an interest in meeting the joint committee's deficit target. Since Republicans have opposed any such sequester impacting revenues, the compromise now is likely to include deep defense cuts, a second priority for the GOP and therefore something of a lever. 
 
 Democrats are fearful that their own priorities—more revenues and fewer Medicare savings—will get lost in the process. And Reid didn’t hide his skepticism after returning from a 90 minute meeting with Obama, Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at the White House. 
 
 “Boehner won’t even negotiate and McConnell is going backward,” said one aide close to the situation. And Reid bluntly accused McConnell of engaging more for show that real compromise. 
 
 “The Republican leader says he’s engaged,” Reid said ruefully. “Fortunately, members of his caucus, at least as far as I’m concerned, are more engaged than he is. There are meaningful talks going on with some of his members with my senators.” 
 
 McConnell shot back, “I actually cut short a conversation with the vice president” to come to the floor. 
 
 The Democrats bigger worry is Boehner, who shows signs of simply running-out-the-clock, playing hard-to-get with Obama and hoping the White House will give into his demands. ||||| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) delayed a vote on his plan to raise the debt ceiling late Saturday to give President Obama and GOP leaders more time to strike an agreement. 
 
 But the delay could imperil the chances of passing legislation to raise the debt limit by Aug. 2, a deadline set by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for avoiding a federal default. 
 
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 A senior Senate GOP aide estimated Friday that leaders would have to reach a deal by 1 a.m. Sunday morning in order to push it through the upper chamber and get it to the House by Tuesday.Leaders will have to rely on the goodwill of every member of the upper chamber to agree to unanimous consent to speed legislation through the Senate in time to make the deadline.The senior GOP aide said members of the Tea Party Caucus who have been resistant to raising the debt ceiling would not drag out the floor procedure to delay a deal sanctioned by Democratic and Republican leaders.A congressional source said Saturday night that Obama and GOP leaders had reached a tentative deal that would raise the debt limit by between $2.4 trillion and $2.8 trillion.It would include spending cuts of about $1 trillion and set up a select bicameral committee to recommend a second deficit-reduction package worth between $1.4 trillion and $1.8 trillion by Thanksgiving.If Congress fails to approve the committee’s recommendations, cuts to Defense and Medicare would go into effect automatically, giving both parties incentive to reach a later agreement.The Medicare reforms would not include cuts to beneficiaries. Instead, the tentative deal would trim payments to healthcare providers and insurance companies, according to an aide familiar with the talks.Senate Republicans would likely be given a vote on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution as part of the final deal.Reid said White House officials asked him to postpone a vote on legislation he crafted to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion and cut spending by an equal amount.Many details of the tentative bipartisan deal remain unresolved, according to Reid.“There are many elements to be finalized and there is still a distance to go before any arrangement can be completed,” Reid said.“I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work,” he said. “I spoke to the White House quite a few times this evening, and they’ve asked me to give everyone as much time as possible to reach an agreement, if one can be reached.”Reid postponed a vote to end a GOP filibuster of his plan until 1:00 pm Sunday. The Senate adjourned at 10:13 p.m. Saturday and will reconvene at noon Sunday.Senate Republicans had accused Reid of forcing a vote early Sunday morning in a deliberate attempt to run out the clock on bipartisan leadership negotiations. They saw it as a part of an effort to pressure moderate Republicans to go along with his own plan to raise the debt limit.“Democrats are running out the clock. They want to delay the hard work of negotiation until the Aug. 2 deadline they’ve been warning us about all summer,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).Reid took to the floor Saturday afternoon to announce that Obama was not close to reaching a deal with House GOP leaders.“The Speaker and the [Senate] Republican leader held a press conference to announce they’re in talks with the president and that a bargain to raise the debt limit is in the works and is close,” Reid said. “Members of the Senate, that is not true.”Reid reported that he had spent two hours with Obama and Vice President Biden and asserted that Republicans “still refuse to negotiate in good faith” because they refuse to allow potential tax increases.McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered a bullish assessment earlier in the day, surprising some senior Democrats who did not realize there was any substantial progress.Democrats took to the Senate floor Saturday night to urge Obama to use unilateral executive authority to increase the debt limit.As the deadline approaches, they have become increasingly anxious over the partisan deadlock on an agreement.“If we fail this, I hope the president will invoke the 14th Amendment and everyone should read it. It says the debt of the United States shall not be questioned. And if we can’t get together, the president will have to take that responsibility,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said.But McConnell seemed confident Saturday that he and Boehner would be able to reach agreement with Obama.“Our country is not going to default for the first time in our history — that is not going to happen — we now have a level of seriousness and the right people at the table that we needed and thought we had, as the Speaker indicated last week,” McConnell said at a Saturday press conference.McConnell’s announcement sparked alarm among some rank-and-file Democrats who were surprised by media reports nine days ago that Obama and Boehner were close to a deal that would have cut entitlements.White House budget director Jack Lew insisted to Democrats at a private meeting on July 21 that there was no deal, but the next day senior administration officials told reporters that they were in fact very close to hatching an agreement.One liberal Democratic senator said he hoped that House Democrats would act as a backstop and derail an agreement which would cut Medicare substantially without offering the possibility of raising taxes.If Obama and GOP leaders cannot finalize an agreement, Reid will move ahead with his own plan, which would not touch entitlement programs. He has reached out to moderate Republicans in hope of persuading at least seven of them to support his plan.So far, Sen. Scott Brown (R), who is facing reelection next year in Massachusetts, has signaled he would vote for Reid’s proposal.Forty-three Senate Republicans signed a letter to Reid on Saturday declaring their opposition to his debt-ceiling legislation. That opposition left Democrats short of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster, virtually assuring the defeat of Reid’s plan when it came up for a scheduled vote.Earlier Saturday, House Republicans resoundingly rejected a version of Reid’s debt plan in a 173-246 vote. Every Republican in the chamber voted against it, while all but 11 Democrats voted in favor.However, Reid says there are more GOP lawmakers in play in the Senate than indicated by McConnell’s letter.“One of the people who signed that letter has met with one of my Democratic senators,” Reid said. “A number of them have already agreed to work with us.” 
 
 Last Updated at 12:16 a.m. ||||| With the default deadline just two days away, prospects for a debt-limit deal seemed to significantly brighten early Sunday after the White House entered intense negotiations with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday in a last-ditch bid to forge a bipartisan agreement to raise the federal debt limit. 
 
 Late Sunday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had given his approval to the emerging debt deal, but must still present the plan to his caucus possibly later Sunday evening. “Senator Reid has signed off on the debt-ceiling agreement pending caucus approval,” his office said. 
 
 After emerging from a lengthy closed-door meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders late Sunday afternoon, Reid (D-Nev.) was asked whether he expects a vote on the deal tonight. 
 
 “I hope so,” he told reporters. 
 
 But sources in both parties said all sides were close to signing off on the emerging agreement except House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). While the reason for the hangup was not immediately clear, the framework has the potential to trigger big cuts in the defense budget. Defense cuts are likely to be problematic for many of the veteran Republicans Boehner will need to push a compromise through the House. A Boehner spokesman did not immediately respond to questions. 
 
 Meanwhile, as expected, the Senate failed to break the 60-vote threshold to end debate on a bill by Reid’s (D-Nev.) bill to raise the debt ceiling by $2.2 trillion in an early afternoon vote on Sunday as the outlines of the deal between Senate leaders and the White House began to take shape. Fifty senators voted to end debate on Reid’s bill and 49 opposed stopping it. 
 
 The winds began shifting towards a deal shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday night when Reid announced that talks between McConnell (R-Ky.) and Vice President Biden had made significant progress, prompting Reid to delay a vote that had been scheduled for 1 a.m. Sunday on his own debt-limit measure. 
 
 “Relief” is the way Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) described the mood on Capitol Hill on CNN’s State of the Nation Sunday morning. “Default is far less of a possibility now then it was even a day ago, because the leaders are talking and talking in a constructive way.” 
 
 But, Schumer added, “There are lots of things that are not filled in.” 
 
 On the same show, McConnell echoed that “we had a good day yesterday” and the parties “were very close” to crafting a deal framework that he could “soon” recommend that Senate Republicans support. 
 
 “We’re not going to have default,” McConnell stated. 
 
 “There are negotiations going on at the White House to avert a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt,” Reid said, after announcing that the vote had been pushed back to 1 p.m. Sunday. “There are many elements to be finalized, and there is still a distance to go before any arrangement can be completed. But I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work.” 
 
 He added: “I’m glad to see this move toward cooperation and compromise. I hope it bears fruit.” 
 
 The emerging agreement calls for raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit by up to $2.4 trillion in two stages, with the debt limit rising unless two-thirds of both chambers of Congress disapprove, according to officials in both parties familiar with the talks. That would extend the Treasury’s borrowing authority into 2013, satisfying President Obama’s demand to avoid another showdown over the issue in the heat of the 2012 presidential campaign. 
 
 The first stage would pair an increase of roughly $1 trillion with cuts to government agencies of about the same magnitude over the next decade. In the second stage, a special congressional committee would be created to identify additional savings later this year. The size of those savings would dictate the size of the second debt-limit increase, giving Republicans the dollar-for-dollar matchup they have demanded between spending cuts and the debt-limit increase. 
 
 The focus of talks Saturday was a mechanism to force the committee to act and to ensure that Congress adopts its recommendations. Late Saturday, McConnell and Biden appeared to have settled on a trigger that would cut most government spending – including the defense budget and Medicare — by as much as 4 percent if the committee failed to produce a plan to tame the spiraling national debt, the officials said. 
 
 It was not immediately clear whether Boehner would accept the emerging framework, or whether he could persuade his fractious conference to support it. But Boehner, too, showed signs of paving the way for compromise Saturday, convening a meeting of the Tuesday Group, a bloc of about 45 moderate Republicans whose votes would be key to pushing any deal through the House. 
 
 “I’d like a big, bold, bipartisan plan. I think that’s what the country needs,” Rep. Robert J. Dold (R-Ill.) said after the meeting. “It’s certainly something I’m looking for.” 
 
 Reid’s announcement of progress in the talks shattered an air of desperation that had settled over the Capitol earlier in the day as rank-and-file lawmakers pleaded with their leaders to set politics aside and strike a bipartisan deal. After months of negotiation and weeks of debate, every black-and-white plan for cutting government spending and raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling was doomed or had already been shot down. 
 
 As the battle entered its final hours, the nation’s leaders were left bickering among themselves, unable to agree even on a modest version of the deal they said they were close to sealing a week ago. Their remaining differences were not especially large, but a resolution appeared elusive. 
 
 “It really shouldn’t be this difficult,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “I believe there’s a bipartisan consensus here in the Senate . . . if we stop talking past each other.” 
 
 Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Reid and McConnell conducted separate talks with the White House in search of an agreement. But the two men were barely speaking to each other, and their anger boiled over onto the Senate floor. 
 
 Reid accused McConnell of blocking the path to compromise that many Senate Republicans were eager to pursue. 
 
 “While the Republican leader is holding meaningless press conferences, his members are reaching out to me . . . to try to move the process forward,” Reid said testily, referring to a midafternoon news conference when McConnell and announced that they were in direct talks with Obama. 
 
 McConnell fired back that he was “more optimistic than my friend, the majority leader,” after negotiating privately with Biden. “I think we’ve got a chance of getting there,” McConnell said. 
 
 “We’re going to get a result on a bipartisan basis. That’s what I’m working on,” McConnell added, complaining that he had been forced to “cut short a conversation with the vice president” to answer Reid’s summons to a meaningless procedural vote. “I’d actually like to get back to work.” 
 
 A Democratic official familiar with the talks said Biden and McConnell were focused on combining the debt-limit plans that emerged from bipartisan negotiations among congressional leaders last weekend. That effort was cut short by Democrats, including Obama. The next day, Reid and Boehner unveiled very similar bills that would cut deeply into agency budgets and create a 12-member committee to find more savings by the end of the year. 
 
 The key difference was the length of the debt-limit extension. Boehner’s bill, which passed the House but died in the Senate, would have granted a reprieve only through February or March 2013, after the 2012 election is decided. Unless the committee came up with $1.8 trillion in additional savings, Congress would face another standoff over the debt limit. 
 
 Reid’s bill, which was pending in the Senate on Saturday, would increase the debt limit into 2013 and count $1 trillion in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a move Republicans decried as an accounting gimmick. 
 
 To bridge the divide, McConnell and administration officials had been trying all week to design a mechanism to force the committee to act, giving Republicans their cuts and Obama his debt-limit increase. 
 
 Republicans were opposed to a trigger that would force automatic tax increases; Democrats were opposed to a trigger with spending cuts only. 
 
 On Saturday, Democrats appeared to have conceded the point in exchange for big automatic defense cuts, which they said would give Republicans a powerful incentive to work with Democrats toward a more palatable compromise. 
 
 Unless Congress lifts the debt limit by Tuesday, Treasury officials have said they will begin to run out of cash to pay the nation’s bills. That could force the government into default, an outcome that could devastate the sputtering U.S. recovery and global financial markets. Over the past week, the Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 540 points amid rising anxiety about the debate in Washington. 
 
 As talks with the White House got underway Saturday, McConnell appeared briefly with Boehner to assure the nation that a resolution was at hand. 
 
 “Our country is not going to default for the first time in history; that is not going to happen,” McConnell said. “We now have a level of seriousness, with the right people at the table.” 
 
 All day Saturday, however, both parties were on the attack. In the House, Republicans were smarting over the Senate’s quick Friday night defeat of Boehner’s proposal for a short-term debt-limit increase. So the GOP returned the favor with a unanimous vote in opposition to Reid’s proposal to increase the debt limit into 2013. 
 
 It was not a real vote. The Reid measure was still pending before the Senate. So Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, drew up his own version of the Reid bill and sent it to its death on the House floor, where 11 Democrats joined Republicans in rejecting the measure, 246 to 173. 
 
 “There are some good things in Senator Reid’s proposals. But I will say this: I don’t believe that continuing down the road towards increasing debt ceilings without the kinds of checks necessary is the right thing to do,” Dreier said. 
 
 Even by House standards, the debate was rowdy and sharp-edged, as lawmakers in both parties hooted and shouted down their colleagues across the aisle. Republicans booed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who accused Boehner of going “to the dark side” when he rewrote his debt-limit bill to add required passage of a balanced budget amendment — a change designed to appeal to his far-right wing. 
 
 Pelosi turned toward her GOP colleagues and said it again with emphasis. “Let me repeat,” she said, “he chose to go to the dark side.” 
 
 The atmosphere was just as tense and bitter in the Senate, where McConnell delivered a letter to Reid signed by 43 Republicans declaring their opposition to his version of the debt-limit bill. 
 
 Four Republican senators did not sign the letter: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But there was little evidence that Reid’s bill could muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster — a fact Reid tacitly acknowledged when he rejected McConnell’s offer to stage a vote early Saturday evening. 
 
 “There are some good things in Senator Reid’s proposals. But I will say this: I don’t believe that continuing down the road towards increasing debt ceilings without the kinds of checks necessary is the right thing to do,” Dreier said. 
 
 In his weekly address, Obama repeated his call for a bipartisan compromise. 
 
 “It must have the support of both parties that were sent here to represent the American people — not just one faction of one party,” the president said. “Congress must find common ground on a plan that can get support from both parties in the House. And it’s got to be a plan that I can sign by Tuesday.” 
 
 Read more on PostPolitics 
 
 Continuing coverage of the debt crisis 
 
 Democrats will lose now, can win later 
 
 Senate conservatives won’t delay vote 
 
 Default may hit consumers quickly 
 
 A Mitch McConnell moment 
 
 A tougher tests looms for John Boehner 
 
 Rachel Van Dongen contributed to this report.
– We may very well be at zero hour: John Boehner has privately told Republicans that in order to get a debt ceiling measure signed by President Obama by the Aug. 2 deadline, it must be introduced in the House today. But despite the increasing likeliness of a US default, Politico reports that hope for a bipartisan deal has disintegrated. After meeting with the president and Nancy Pelosi last night, Harry Reid accused Boehner of taking a "my-way-or-the-highway approach," and reiterated the fact that his two-part plan—or any short-term plan—is "a non-starter in the Senate and with the president." Politico also notes that Obama, after three weeks of being highly visible, was on the sidelines during this weekend's developments, a potentially risky move this late in the game. Republicans, however, say Reid had been working with them right up until the change-of-heart-inducing White House meeting: “Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the president said no,” says one Republican aide. Another adds that while Boehner has the 218 House votes he needs for his proposal, Reid and Obama don't have the 60 they need in the Senate for any alternative. At this point, the New York Times reports, Boehner and Reid are preparing dueling back-up plans; Reid's would include $2.7 trillion in spending cuts, no new taxes, and the full $2.4 trillion debt limit extension, as opposed to Boehner's two-stage extension plan. Bloomberg notes that even if default is avoided, the US could lose its AAA rating.