House Speaker John Boehner predicted Thursday that a majority of House Republicans will end up supporting some kind of compromise as the Senate began debating a House-passed effort to tie an increase in the debt ceiling to conservative demands for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

The Senate has taken up tea party-backed House legislation tying an increase in the government's borrowing authority to a series of conservative demands including a constitutional balanced budget amendment.

The top Democrat in the House reacted positively to a new bipartisan budget plan emerging in the Senate, even as a top House GOP military hawk said it would cut defense way too much.

Senate Republicans are showing far more flexibility than their tea party-backed House colleagues as Washington policymakers seek to steer the government away from a first-ever default on its financial obligations.

Leaders of a bipartisan "Gang of Six" senators said Tuesday that they've reached agreement on a major plan to cut the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the coming decade through tax reform, Medicare and Social Security overhaul, and repeal of the CLASS Act, among other measures.

With a default deadline drawing ominously near, House Republican leaders are giving the tea party what amounts to a symbolic floor vote on a "cut, cap and balance" debt-limit plan while behind the scenes work continues on a fallback measure that could become the framework for a compromise.

One of the Senate's staunchest budget-cutters unveiled Monday a massive plan to cut the nation's deficit by $9 trillion over the coming decade.

Hope dimming for a broad debt-limit deal, Congress and the White House scrambled Wednesday to salvage deficit-reduction talks while top congressional Republicans said the nation cannot afford to default on its obligations — for economic reasons and their party's own good.