US House to vote on raising borrowing cap

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House votes Thursday on a plan to avert an American default, but conservatives in the Republican-dominated lower chamber, Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama were all lined up against the measure.

Fears that the deadlock won't be broken pushed global stock markets down yet another day as investors worried that a dysfunctional Congress might remain gridlocked past the Tuesday deadline to raise the debt limit.

Without legislation in place by Tuesday, the Obama administration says the Treasury will not be able to pay all the nation's bills, possibly triggering a default that could prove catastrophic for an economy still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression. That would have major global consequences for the world's increasingly interconnected economies.