Obama, Republicans, seek to break debt impasse

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama meets Sunday with top Republicans in a high-stakes effort to reach a crucial budget deal before an early-August deadline amidst a thicket of angry politics.Obama was to sit down with leaders of both parties in the Republican-held House of Representatives and the Democratic-led Senate to find a way to slash spending as part of a compromise to raise the US debt ceiling."Real differences remain," the president said at the White House Friday, blaming "uncertainty" over the final outcome of the negotiations for keeping the economic climate cautious."It's not like there's some imminent deal about to happen. There are serious disagreements about how to deal with this very serious problem," Republican House Speaker John Boehner agreed at his weekly press conference.But "the situation that we face is pretty urgent. Matter of fact, I think I would describe it as dire," Boehner said, warning against brinksmanship with the fast-approaching August 2 deadline, which must be met to avert a catastrophic US default.Hopes appeared to dim further late Saturday as Boehner warned he was abandoning efforts to reach a larger, comprehensive debt reduction deal with the White House.Boehner said in a statement that his party would scale back the discussions and "focus on producing a smaller measure" of cuts that would offset any limit in the US debt increase, to avert a default.During his weekly Saturday radio address, Obama again acknowledged "real differences of approach," but he injected a note of optimism as well."The good news is, we agree on some of the big things," Obama pointed out."We agree that after a decade of racking up deficits and debt, we finally need to get our fiscal house in order. We agree that to do that, both sides are going to have to step outside their comfort zones and make some political sacrifices," he said."And we agree that we simply cannot afford to default on our national obligations for the first time in our history; that we need to uphold the full faith and cr

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