Key politicans outline emerging debt, default deal

The AP reports:

The top Republican in the Senate said Congress and the White House were very close to a deal on raising the limit on U.S. borrowing that would avert an unprecedented default on America's debt, ending one of the nastiest partisan fights in recent memory.
But the White House and Democrats cautioned that the details of an agreement still had not been sorted through.

The broadest outlines of the emerging bargain would increase the debt limit in return for spending cuts of about $1 trillion initially. A joint committee of members of Congress would then need to act on a larger package of cuts that included tax and entitlement reform as the price for a second raise in the nation's borrowing limit through early 2013 — a date that takes the highly partisan issue off the agenda until after next year's presidential and congressional elections.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he was nearing a recommendation of the tentative agreement to Republicans in the upper chamber.