Washington (CNN) - Congress is expected to vote Monday on a last-minute agreement to raise the federal government's debt ceiling while imposing sweeping spending cuts, a bipartisan deal that promises to narrowly avert an unprecedented national default with catastrophic economic consequences.

The deal calls for $2.4 trillion in cutsover the next decade, raises the debt ceiling through the end of 2012, and establishes a special congressional commission to recommend long-term fiscal reforms.

The measure needs to reach President Barack Obama's desk by Tuesday night. If the current $14.3 trillion debt limit is not increased by that point, Americans could face rapidly rising interest rates, a falling dollar, and shakier financial markets, among other problems.

But with no tax increases in the deal, can Democrats get on board?

This morning on American Morning, Carol Costello talks with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin about whether Democrats will be able to agree to the plan.

At one point, Costello asks Durbin if he felt Democrats were giving in to extortion by agreeing to a plan that they are not satisfied with if Tea Party members were willing to let the country default.

"Of course, it is," Durbin says. "It's political extortion and if you say that you're prepared to call somebody's bluff using other people's chips, that's what we're down to. A lot of innocent people would have suffered if we would, in fact, have gone into this default. We avoided that and that was something we had to do."

See the entire interview above.

President Obama and Congressional leaders struck a deal on a legislative package yesterday that would extend the federal debt ceiling while cutting spending and guaranteeing further deficit-reduction steps.

The proposed deal includes $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years while authorizing an increase in the federal debt ceiling by a slightly smaller amount to allow the government to pay its debts through 2012, according to information from the White House and a presentation for his Republican colleagues by House Speaker John Boehner.

Jay Powell, Treasury Under Secretary under President George H.W. Bush, talks with Christine Romans on American Morning today about the details of the deal and the possibility of a U.S. credit downgrade.

In a major setback for Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team, the House was forced to delay a vote last night on his plan to raise the nation's debt-ceiling, as conservative lawmakers continued to question if the plan would do enough to reign in the national debt.

However, even if the Boehner plan does pass the House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, has promised that the Democratic-controlled Senate will block it.

Today on American Morning, Stephen Moore joins Ali Velshi and Christine Romans to weigh in on if Boehner will be able to get the conservatives on board and to discuss if the bill will satisfy credit ratings agencies and investors.

House Speaker John Boehner was unable to muster sufficient support from the hardline fiscal conservatives in his caucus to pass his debt-ceiling plan in the House yesterday, causing the expected vote on the bill to be delayed.

Representative Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina and a Tea Party freshman, is one of the members of Congress who Boehner failed to win over last evening.

Gowdy joins Christine Romans today on American Morning to discuss whether progress was made in last night's meeting with the GOP caucus and to weigh in on what it will take for him to support the debt-ceiling bill.

"I view my job as the Congressman for the Fourth Congressional District in South Carolina is to vote the collective conscience of my constituents which is this: We have a $14 trillion problem. The notion of giving the President a clean debt increase was never going to happen," Gowdy says in the interview.

He adds, "What we'll do today, I predict will be done today, is for the third time, send a plan that raises the debt ceiling in a responsible way."

See the entire interview here.