Update: 11am The deal is done: Barack Obama made a special Sunday night announcement that a debt-ceiling plan had been agreed on and signed off by both party leaders. The agreement declares a one trillion cut to spending and a new bipartisan committee to be established who will report back to Congress in November with the plans to lower the deficit.

“At this stage, everything is on the table,” said Obama, noting that despite what some Republicans have argued, tax rises for the rich are needed and despite what some fellow Democrats argue, Medicare and Medicaid are still liable to be cut.

“Is this the deal I would have preferred? No,” admitted Obama, noting that a committee was not his first preference and he would have preferred to examine tax rises and cuts to entitlements. Obama noted that the negotiations had been long and messy, but that this new plan will “lift the cloud of debt and uncertainty that hangs over our economy”.

9am: In the dying days of the US debt-ceiling negotiations, it appears a deal has finally been made by lawmakers with Senate majority leader Harry Reid “tentatively” signing off on a budget plan. The US had only until August 2 to renegotiate its debt ceiling before it defaults.

Reid says he hopes to have a vote on the plan on Sunday night (Washington time) and full details of the deal have not yet been made public. The New York Times reported how the deal was done:

All afternoon, after Senate Republicans, as expected, blocked progress on a Democratic plan, Senate Democrats and House Republicans had worked feverishly with White House officials Sunday to iron out the final components of a deal to avoid imminent default, negotiating the design of a mechanism that, after an initial round of spending cuts and debt relief this year, would help force the hand of Congress when the time comes for a second round next year.

There seemed to be broad agreement that any deal reached would include at least $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, of which $1.2 trillion would be approved now. But there was intense jockeying over the terms governing the next steps, including the work of a new bipartisan Congressional committee whose members would be charged with finding more deficit reductions in time for a second increase in the debt ceiling in just a few months.

… Under the framework that negotiators were discussing today, half of those cuts would come in defence spending, while the other half would be a combination of other domestic spending, like discretionary programs and farm subsidies. Cuts to Medicare would not make up more than 3 percent of the non-military cuts. While many Republicans are loath to risk such cuts to defence, some of the more Tea Party-influenced freshmen members are less concerned with that than with getting big spending cuts overall while avoiding tax increases at all costs.

But many on the Left are furious at what they see as a win for the Republicans, with a focus on cutting social security and Medicare rather than raising taxes (exactly what the Republicans had wanted). “Liberals began tearing into President Obama and Democrats on Sunday, accusing them of caving to Republican demands even before final details of a debt-ceiling agreement have been announced,” reports Michael D Shear in the New York Times.

Apparently political rhetoric sounds similar no matter the nation. Shear notes that progressive group MoveOn.org released a “scathing” statement on the latest news of the debt-ceiling plans, declaring it  “extremely troubling that it now appears that some Democrats are willing to give in to Republican demands to make this already disastrous plan worse for working families”.

In recent weeks, the Tea Party movement has been pushing heavily for a “balanced budget” amendment to the Constitution and calling for Republicans not to compromise on a debt-ceiling plan. As Kenneth P. Vogel and Marin Cogan write in Politico:

“How Tea Party activists and organisers react to a compromise not to their liking could go a long way towards determining the fate of the small-government movement that exploded onto the scene in 2009 in opposition to what activists saw as unchecked spending by President Barack Obama and the Democratic congress.”

In regards to reaching a compromise, perhaps the two parties were moved by the daily prayer given by Senate chaplain Admiral Barry C. Black. As David A. Fahrenthold notes in the Washington Post, the chaplain has been getting more specific and concerning as the final date for a debt deal drew closer:

On Friday, Black dialled it up another notch. “Lord, help them to comprehend the global repercussions of some poor decisions, and the irreversibility of some tragic consequences,” he prayed. “Quicken their ears to hear. Their eyes to see. Their hearts to believe and their wills to obey you. Before …”

And here Black slowed his usual stately cadence down even further, in case people weren’t getting it. “… it is too late”.

Nothing. On Saturday, Black seemed to be more specific with God: “We need you on Capitol Hill,” he said. And his warnings to the lawmakers became even more dire. He spoke of “when night comes” — a reference to a verse from the Bible’s Book of John, where night is a metaphor for death.

“Deliver our lawmakers from the paralysis of analysis, when constructive and prompt action is desperately needed,” he asked. “Faced with potentially disastrous consequences, give the members of this body the wisdom to work while it is day. For the night comes, when no one can work.”

Finally, on Sunday morning, Black gave a prayer that might have fit the crew of a sinking ship. “The waters are coming in upon us,” Black said. “We are weary from the struggle, tempted to throw in the towel. But quitting isn’t an option.”

After he spoke, the Senate said the Pledge of Allegiance. And then Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) got up to speak, hopefully, of the possibility of a deal to end the crisis.

The official Barack Obama Twitter account, which has more than nine million followers, called for direct action on Saturday. For hours it tweeted at its followers the individual user names of the Republican Senators in each state, asking supporters to tweet directly at the Republicans saying they supported a compromise in the debt-ceiling plan.

“The lesson: you can afford to be less than subtle when you have more than 9 million followers,” writes Ray Gustini in The Atlantic Wire.

The deal still has to pass the Senate, the House and be signed off by the president. It may be last-minute, but there’s still time for it to pass — or fold.