The Washington Post / By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane

The House narrowly passed GOP debt-limit legislation Friday after Republican leaders revised it to gain the support of recalcitrant tea party conservatives, but Senate Democrats declared it dead on arrival in their chamber and moved to replace it with a bipartisan plan that would raise the federal debt ceiling ahead of an Aug. 2 deadline, averting a potentially catastrophic U.S. default.

The vote was 218 to 210 in favor of a bill offered by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). After revising the plan and intensively rallying Republicans to support it, Boehner was barely able to muster the 217 votes need for passage, but Democrats were united in opposing it. Twenty-two Republicans joined 188 Democrats in voting “no.”

President Obama warned earlier in the day that the House GOP plan had “no chance of becoming law,” and he instead urged Senate Democrats and Republicans to reach a “bipartisan compromise.” He said time is running out to lift the federal debt ceiling and reiterated his objections to a measure that includes only a short-term increase of the debt limit.

Senate Democrats said they remained solidly opposed to the Boehner plan. In debate leading up to the vote, minority House Democrats called the measure a waste of time.

The House GOP leaders offered party members a reworked plan Friday morning designed to appeal to arch-conservatives, and several previously skeptical lawmakers dropped their opposition to it on grounds it did not go far enough in tying large deficit reductions to Obama’s requested increase in the debt ceiling. Members who exited a House Republican Conference meeting said the new proposal would not change the first step of their original two-stage plan to raise the debt limit but would call for Congress to send to the states a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution as a prerequisite for the second stage of the debt-ceiling increase to take effect early next year.

In the first stage of the process called for in the legislation for raising the debt limit, spending would be slashed by $917 billion over the next decade, primarily by making deep cuts to government agencies. The debt limit, meanwhile, would be raised by $900 billion, granting the Treasury a reprieve until February or March.

The second stage would involve the creation of a new committee made up of 12 lawmakers from both parties and both chambers. The committee would be tasked with identifying an additional $1.8 trillion in cuts before the end of the year. If the committee made recommendations and they were adopted, Obama would be authorized to raise the debt limit into early 2013 without explicit congressional approval.

In debate shortly before the final vote, Boehner said his bill keeps his promise to cut spending by more than the increase in the debt limit, imposes caps to restrain future spending and advances “the great cause of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.” He said that before the president can request the additional increase in the debt ceiling, “a committee of congress must produce spending cuts larger than the increase, and both houses must send to the states a balanced-budget amendment.” He stressed that the deficit reductions are achieved “without raising taxes.”

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