Senate cancels debt bill vote, progress ensues

This might be the first glimmer of real hope we've seen for weeks. From The New York Times:

After a tense day of Congressional floor fights and angry exchanges, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, called off a planned showdown vote set for after midnight, but said he would convene the Senate at noon on Sunday for a vote an hour later. He said he wanted to give the new negotiations a chance to produce a plan to raise the federal debt limit in exchange for spending cuts and the creation of a new Congressional committee that would try to assemble a long-range deficit-cutting proposal.

“There are many elements to be finalized and there is still a distance to go before an arrangement can be completed,” said Mr. Reid, who just a few hours earlier had played down talk of any agreement. “But I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work.”

Mr. Reid’s announcement set off an almost audible sigh of relief on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers and their aides had been bracing for an overnight clash over the debt following a day that had seen a heated House vote and lawmakers trudging from office to office in search of an answer to the impasse.

The first indication off a softening of the hard lines that have marked weeks of partisan wrangling over the debt limit came in the afternoon when the two leading Congressional Republicans announced that they had reopened fiscal talks with the White House and expected their last-ditch drive to produce a compromise.

Following the House’s sharp rejection of a proposal by Mr. Reid to raise the debt limit and cut spending, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a linchpin in efforts to reach a deal, said he and Speaker John A. Boehner were “now fully engaged” in efforts with the White House to find a resolution that would tie an increase in the debt limit to spending cuts and other conditions.

“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,” said Mr. McConnell, who noted he was personally talking to both Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a favorite partner in past negotiations.

Despite today's theatrics, a final debt deal is (apparently) in the works. ABC News has learned the details of a "tentative deal" reached by Republicans and the White House. It would be structured as follows: (1) $2.8 trillion in a debt ceiling increase (through 2012); (2) immediate cuts of $1 trillion; (3) vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment; (4) a committee to recommend (roughly) $1.8 trillion in further cuts to match (dollar for dollar) the debt increase; and (5) a trigger mechanism to enact "across-the-board cuts," including cuts to Defense and Medicare. Let's be cautiously optimistic.