House to vote on tea party-backed debt plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — With a default deadline drawing near, House Republican leaders are giving the tea party what amounts to a symbolic floor vote on a "cut, cap and balance" debt-limit plan while behind the scenes work continues on a fallback measure that could become the framework for a compromise.

The chamber will vote later today on the 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 cut, cap and balance measure — and the veto threat issued Monday — sparked the latest in predictable tit-for-tat exchanges between combatants of Capitol Hill and in the White House, even as it was revealed that President Barack Obama hosted House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., at the White House on Sunday.

"We're making progress," Obama reported.