WASHINGTON (AP) ? 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 are searching once more for an ambitious $4 trillion grand bargain. Officials said wide differences remain.
The government is less than two weeks from an Aug. 2 deadline that could precipitate a first-ever 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.
