President Barack Obama (2nd R) and Vice President Joe Biden (2nd L) meet with House Speaker John Boehner (L) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington in this July 20, 2011 photograph. U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Speaker of the House John Boehner on the patio near the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, in this July 3, 2011 photograph. U.S. Senate approval on a 74 to 26 vote of the $2.1 trillion deficit-reduction plan, already passed on Monday by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, drove away the immediate specter of a catastrophic U.S. debt default. President Barack Obama immediately signed the bill into law, lifting the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling hours before a Tuesday midnight deadline. But the rancorous debt and deficit battle between his Democrats and their Republican rivals left Obama politically bruised as he heads into a campaign for a second term in 2012.