As you wake up this morning, gentle reader,  here’s where we stand in the Debt Crisis Negotiations:

Senate Majority Leader “Dinghy” Harry Reid has a plan.  Speaker of the House “Cryin” John Boehner is revising his plan.

And, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm), the President of the United States of America, has no plan.

…And no clue.

House Republicans have delayed a vote on Boehner’s bill, which was supposed to be voted on today. The Congressional Budget Office smacked it down, by issuing a report saying it would save far less over the next decade than the $1.2 trillion advertised. According to the CBO, the spending cuts would save only about $850 billion over the next decade.

That means that Cryin’ John’s proposal would not meet his own demand that the cuts exceed the size of the $900 billion debt-limit increase.

As of last night, House Republicans were feverishly rewriting the proposal in an attempt to bring the numbers into line. The vote on the measure might possibly happen Thursday.

Meanwhile, our petulant president hinted that that he would veto the measure because it would force another battle over the debt limit early next year.

At the same time, Dinghy Harry Reid was proclaiming Boehner’s proposal DOA in the Senate, where he and his Democrat colleagues were having a hard time rallying votes for their own plan to raise the debt limit by $2.7 trillion, supposedly enough additional borrowing authority to cover the nation’s bills into 2013.

Reportedly, the Capitol Switchboard was receiving 40,000 calls per hour yesterday, twice as many as normal.  Most Americans were telling their lawmakers to stand firm.  Others (Obama fans) were responding to his pleas to call for an end to the stalemate.  Still others were the elderly and infirm, worried that the impasse could prevent their Social Security checks from arriving on time.

Per washingtonpost.com:

The national debt has already hit the $14.3 trillion legal limit. Unless Congress acts by next Tuesday, Treasury officials say they could begin running short of cash for federal health-care and retirement benefits, military salaries and payments due investors, potentially throwing the U.S. government into default for the first time. Even if a default is avoided, credit-rating companies are threatening to downgrade the nation’s AAA rating, a move that could drive up interest rates for governments at all levels, as well as for ordinary Americans. Some Republicans have challenged the Treasury’s warnings and said the economic fallout would be limited.

While Boehner faces major challenges in getting the House to approve his proposal, Reid was faring no better in the Senate. Democratic aides acknowledged that the Senate bill is unlikely to pass without Republican support.

That backing was not forthcoming Tuesday. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized the Democratic alternative, saying it contains “highly suspect spending reduction features.” He argued that more than a third of the $2.7 trillion in savings in Reid’s bill would come from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — money Obama never intended to spend.

With less than a week left to strike a deal, Reid was engaged in talks with Boehner and McConnell about a potential compromise. But they remained deeply divided over the size of a debt-ceiling increase and the mission of a new debt-reduction committee that would be created under both measures.

Late Tuesday, the trio was still searching for a way to ensure that Congress adopts a far-reaching strategy in the coming months for reducing the national debt — or to guarantee that lawmakers would raise the debt limit a second time without such a plan.

…while the president’s manufactured deadline looms near.

Per Charlie Gasparino, of Fox Business Network:

While officials from the Obama Administration raised their rhetoric over the weekend about the possibility of a debt default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, they privately have been telling top executives at major U.S. banks that such an event won’t happen, FOX Business has learned.

In a series of phone calls, administration officials have told bankers that the administration will not allow a default to happen even if the debt cap isn’t raised by the August 2 date Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the government will run out of money to pay all its bills, including obligations to bond holders. Geithner made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows saying a default is imminent if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, and President Obama issued a similar warning during a Friday press conference after budget negotiations with House Republicans broke down.

…A senior banking official told FOX Business that administration officials have provided guidance to them that even though a default is off the table, a downgrade “is a real possibility for no other reason than S&P and Moody’s have to cover (themselves) since they’ve been speaking out on the debt cap so much.”

Yesterday, during the Daily Press Briefing, held by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, the normal softball-throwing reporters turned into Nolan Ryan, peppering Carney with questions about why the White House won’t release something in writing laying out its position on the Debt Ceiling Crisis.

According to the Carney, that would be a risky move. If the White House were to do that,

…your chances of actually getting an agreement diminish significantly.

That’s how it works. You know that’s how it works.

Uhhh, no, you jackwagon. As your boss, Barack Hussein Obama, said recently:

If you want to be a leader, you got to lead.