The White House won't host any further negotiations Friday
President Obama will hold a news conference on Friday at 11 a.m. to talk about what the White House describes as "the status of efforts to find a balanced approach to deficit reduction."
Hoping to edge closer to a tentative debt-ceiling deficit-reduction deal, Obama urged House and Senate leaders on Thursday to work "over the next 24 to 36 hours" toward finding a path forward, according to congressional aides.
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In a meeting at the White House, Obama asked the leaders to speak about the negotiations at their caucus meetings on Friday to--in the words of one Democratic aide--"figure out what can get 218 and 60 [votes], respectively."
And with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., now negotiating separately from House leaders on an alternate path to raise the debt ceiling, the momentum has shifted to the upper chamber where leaders are more aggressively working to assure that the United States will not default on its debt.