Government Shutdown, Federal Debt | featured news

A key Republican leader assured Sunday that a congressional supercommittee will reach agreement on $1.5 trillion in cuts in government spending by next month's deadline and avert deep automatic measures.

Rival Democratic and Republican plans to raise the government's borrowing ability have thrust Congress into a standoff just one week away from a potentially devastating debt crisis.

Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director both predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand.