As the denouement approaches, and a resolution to the debt crisis appears to be at hand, one has to ask how many of the participants continue to believe that a default on U.S. Treasury obligations was ever at risk.
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More on John Boehner

Senate Majority Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Sunday night that they had come to an agreement on a deal that would raise the federal debt limit and reduce the deficit.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached agreement Sunday on a legislative package that would extend the federal debt ceiling. The proposed deal still requires congressional approval.

Few people are concerned about the elderly, the poor, and the sick. Rather, this debt deal, like everything else, is driven by fear of disturbing the Asian markets. We are worrying about the downgrade, not the citizens
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More on Republicans

WASHINGTON -- The Republicans are killing Keynesian economics with their attempt to cut spending as the economy rebounds from a recession, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a floor speech on Sunday.

"I would say, Mr. President, that symbolically, that agreement is moving us to the point where we are having the final interment of John Maynard Keynes," he said, referring to the British economist. "He normally died in 1946 but it appears we are going to put him to his final rest with this agreement."

Keynes argued that aggregate demand was not always enough to spur full employment and that outside structures, such as governments, could influence the economy to create jobs and regulate business cycles. His thinking influenced later New Deal spending by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

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More on Debt Ceiling

The Senate failed to advance debt-ceiling legislation moved by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, even as lawmakers say progress is being made on a final agreement that they hope can pass before the Aug. 2 deadline to avoid a federal default.

Top Dem says he feels "a lot better" about debt deal, but emphasizes that hundreds of details remain - and "nothing is done yet"

The Senate's top Democrat sounds a newly optimistic tone as a key test vote is delayed to midday Sunday, but is Congress now too partisan to settle on any middle ground?

Lawmakers huddled in tense negotiations as a weekend of round-the-clock sessions became a test not only of whether a solution could be found for the stalemate over the federal debt, but also of whether a viable center still exists in American politics.

This week, as the debt ceiling debate inched its way closer to the Aug. 2 deadline, the acrimony became internecine, with former GOP standard-bearer John McCain deriding Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and "Tea Party hobbits," and one-time Tea Party poster boy Allen West bemoaning the faction's debt ceiling "schizophrenia." Cut, Cap, and Bicker. This week also saw the funerals of two very different artists: Amy Winehouse, a talented but troubled performer, who died at 27 (joining Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, and Cobain in a "forever" club you definitely don't want to be a member of), and Michael Cacoyannis, the 90-year-old director of my all-time favorite life-affirming film, Zorba the Greek. Winehouse's untimely passing drew worldwide attention, her legacy destined to be a cautionary tale; Cacoyannis, who died in my hometown of Athens, went quietly. But both deaths, in very different ways, remind us of Zorba's message to live each moment fully.
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More on Tea Party

After a long day wrangling over the debt ceiling, it's unclear if progress was made; New senate vote on debt delayed