President Barack Obama and the two top House Republican leaders held an unannounced meeting at the White House Sunday, trying to get debt talks back on track with just two weeks left before the threat of default. 
 
 Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were both part of the discussions which come even as the House GOP has scheduled floor votes Tuesday on a newly revised debt ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date and represents a real shift to the right. 
 
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 Boehner’s office confirmed the meeting to POLITICO Monday but said that the goal was to keep lines of communication open, not to change the legislative plan for this week. 
 
 “As we said throughout the weekend, the lines of communications are being kept open,” said Kevin Smith. “But there is nothing to report in terms of an agreement or progress. We believe cut, cap and balance represents the best path forward, and we are looking forward to the House vote on it tomorrow.” 
 
 Obama clearly disagrees, and the administration said flatly Monday that the president would veto the House bill –regardless of the debt ceiling impact—if the measure should ever reach his desk 
 
 Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s. 
 
 Indeed, much of the deficit-reduction legislation signed by Reagan would not qualify under the new tea-party-driven standards. And even the famed Reagan-Tip O’Neill Social Security compromise — which raised payroll taxes — passed the House in 1983 well short of the 290 votes that would be required under the constitutional amendments being promoted by the GOP. 
 
 Dubbed Cut, Cap and Balance, the House bill allows for a $2.4 trillion increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority but effectively uses the Aug. 2 deadline as a Republican anvil on which to hammer out cuts President Barack Obama would otherwise veto. 
 
 On the Sunday talk shows, proponents praised the initiative as a “common-sense” and “real deal” framework for final negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats. 
 
 “At least we will have demonstrated we can pass legislation to deal with the debt ceiling and put the onus on the Senate to act,” Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) told POLITICO. But in a blistering statement, Robert Greenstein, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the bill “stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.” 
 
 Statutory caps would drive spending down to 19.9 percent of gross domestic product by 2021 — a $1 trillion difference with Obama in that year alone. At the same time, Pentagon appropriations are assumed to grow even as Supplemental Security Income payments for the elderly and the disabled would be exposed to future sequesters to enforce the caps. ||||| The White House on Monday threatened to veto a measure that would require congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt ceiling can be raised. 
 
 The GOP-controlled House is expected to vote on such a proposal Tuesday. 
 
 A announcement came as a bipartisan effort in the Senate to allow President Obama to raise the federal debt ceiling in exchange for about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years gained momentum. Leaders agreed that they would have to act in the next two weeks to avert a potential default by the government. 
 
 The growing backing for raising the federal limit on U.S. borrowing sets the stage for a week of largely scripted actions on Capitol Hill, where leaders in both chambers are looking to build support for the plan being crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 
 
 Republican leaders will first push forward in the House and the Senate with a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. The measure is virtually certain to fail in the Senate, which will then take up the debt limit proposal by midweek. 
 
 If that clears the Senate, the House is expected to revise the measure, adding a proposal to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years — savings that would come through cuts to domestic programs but not new tax revenue. The plan would also create a congressional panel that would, by the end of the year, seek to come up with a way of reducing the deficit potentially by trillions more through cuts in entitlements and new tax revenue. 
 
 While the debt-limit plan has broad support in the Senate, the prospects in the House are less clear and depend largely on whether Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) will bring the proposal up for a vote and how many House Democrats would support it, since few Republicans are expected to get behind it. 
 
 “At a minimum, Congress has a way to take action and avoid default on the U.S. debt. It’s critical,” Jacob Lew, Obama’s budget director, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 
 
 At the same time, the White House will continue to push for as big a deal as possible to cut the deficit, including spending cuts and changes to entitlements as well as increases in tax revenue. 
 
 On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Lew said he hoped the Republicans could compromise with Obama on a big deal. But he did not express optimism. “The question is: Do we have a partner to work with?” he asked. 
 
 Informal talks between the White House and Congress over the weekend did not appear to move the two sides significantly closer to a big deal. Leaders face an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling or face a potentially damaging government default on the nation’s obligations. They say they need to get a piece of legislation underway by week’s end to clear procedural barriers and raise the debt limit in time. 
 
 Most lawmakers were focusing on the new Senate plan, originally proposed last week by McConnell and further developed by Reid. Under the plan, Obama would be able to raise the debt ceiling three times over the next year for a total increase of $2.5 trillion. Congress could also vote on a resolution of disapproval each time, assigning blame to Obama for increasing the nation’s debt. 
 
 In addition to the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, the plan would create a committee of 12 lawmakers, which would issue a report to Congress by the end of the year on how to cut trillions more from federal deficits over the next 10 years. This panel would seek agreement where Obama and Republicans haven’t been able to — primarily over changes to entitlement programs and whether raising new tax revenue should play a key role in cutting the deficit. 
 
 “At the end of the day, Republican leaders have made it clear that we will not be the ones to put the government into default,” Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week. “Now the House of Representatives has to make its decision about what it will do.” 
 
 “We basically have to accept this responsibility and do this job and lead,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” 
 
 Obama and Boehner have both shown a keen interest in a “grand bargain,” but the issue of taxes has proved in­trac­table. Such a deal could still be achieved in the coming weeks, though the prospects have dimmed. 
 
 Before taking up the McConnell-Reid plan, the House and Senate will consider the “cut, cap and balance” approach being pushed by Republicans. The House is slated to vote early this week on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution that would significantly scale back government spending and make it harder for lawmakers to raise taxes. 
 
 Nearly 40 House Republicans have said they would not support an increase in the debt ceiling without such an amendment. But Democrats strongly oppose the measure. 
 
 Other Republicans will continue to exert pressure for even bigger cuts. Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) will propose on Monday a plan to cut $9 trillion from the federal deficit over 10 years. “The McConnell plan is more of Washington not taking responsibility,” he said Sunday. 
 
 Lew expressed confidence that the debt ceiling will be raised despite some GOP objections. “There will be a fringe that believes that playing with Armageddon is a good idea, but I don’t think that’s where the majority will be,” he said. ||||| The United States Senate will hold daily sessions, including on weekends, until legislation is passed to raise the country's limit on borrowing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.“The Senate will stay in session every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, from now until Congress passes legislation that prevents the United States from defaulting on our obligations,” Reid said in a prepared statement.Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said on Monday he was making progress in talks with Republican congressional leaders on a debt and deficit deal.“We're making progress,” Obama told reporters when asked about the negotiations after announcing his nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Obama said Monday he wants to make sure payroll taxes do not go up for U.S. families next year and that politics should not get in the way of tackling the the U.S. deficit.“We can't let politics stand in the way of doing the right thing in Washington ,” Obama said while announcing his nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
– So much for the weekend plans of the United States Senate: The Chicago Tribune notes that Harry Reid said today he'll hold session every single day "from now until Congress passes legislation that prevents the United States from defaulting on our obligations." While little progress was made last week, President Obama met with John Boehner and Eric Cantor in secret yesterday in an effort to get deficit talks back on track before the Aug. 2 deadline, adds Politico. “We're making progress,” he said today. Republicans are expected to vote tomorrow on a measure requiring congressional approval of a budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt ceiling is raised—a measure Obama bluntly says he would veto, reports the Washington Post. But some 40 House GOPers say they won't touch the debt ceiling without such a "cut, cap, and balance” measure. “There will be a fringe that believes that playing with Armageddon is a good idea, but I don’t think that’s where the majority will be,” says Obama's budget director.