Washington often seems to work best when it’s facing a deadline.  Let's hope that trend holds true.

Conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is that a deal will be done to raise the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline.  Negotiations continue today, with Capitol Hill sources telling ABC News that President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner are once again talking about more than four trillion dollars in deficit reductions.

Virtually all Democrats and Republicans agree that the debt ceiling must be raised to avoid the U.S. defaulting on its financial obligations, but GOP lawmakers want to see significant reductions in the deficit before agreeing to raise the debt limit.  The president and many Democrats support deficit reductions but are concerned the cuts will be mainly focused on areas of the budget that affect senior citizens, working families and college students.

The GOP is resisting any proposal that includes tax increases, saying those measures would hurt the economy as it struggles to recover.  Democrats say asking the wealthy to pay more and also want to eliminate tax breaks for major oil companies, saying its only fair if Social Security and college tuition programs are being targeted for cuts.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, White House Budget Director Jack Lew said he would like to see a balanced strategy for cutting the deficit.  Lew said, “It's not fair to ask senior citizens to pay a price, to ask families paying for their college educations for their children to pay a price but to leave the most privileged out of the bargain.”

Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate minority whip, says a major part of the deficit can be cut by eliminating waste in entitlement programs.  Kyl says GOP lawmakers have already identified over 100 billion dollars a year in savings just from over-payments in Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment compensation.

The White House says debt ceiling legislation needs to be moving through Congress by Friday in order to get a bill passed by the August 2 deadline.  If not, American will default on its debuts, a scenario economists say could have catastrophic consequences for the nation's economy.