“After a discussion about potential paths forward, no specific determination was made,” the White House said in a statement to reporters. “The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle.” 
 
 Obama’s meeting with about 20 House Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), lasted about 90 minutes. Obama was accompanied by Vice President Biden, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors. The White House statement said the administration officials “listened to the Republicans present their proposal,” adding that Obama’s goal remains to both raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government. 
 
 House Republican leaders initially offered a six-week increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with President Obama on longer-term “pressing problems,” but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 10th day. 
 
 Later in the day, Senate Republicans put forward a plan that would reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit for as long as three months. 
 
 Returning to the Capitol after meeting with Obama at the White House, members of a 20-strong House Republican delegation described the session as a good first step. 
 
 The White House denied a news report that Obama had rejected the House GOP’s proposal outright, saying that “no specific determination was made” after Obama, Vice President Biden and top officials listened to the presentation. 
 
 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the gathering was “a very useful meeting” and indicated that conversations would continue into the evening. 
 
 “It was clarifying, I think, for both sides as to where we are,” he said. 
 
 “We put an offer on the table,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters. Obama “didn’t say yes; he didn’t say no,” Ryan said. “We’re continuing to negotiate this evening.” 
 
 Earlier, in a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit temporarily, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.” He described the offer as a “good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he’s demanded in order to have these conversations begin.” 
 
 Obama is “happy” that House Republicans agree a federal debt default is not an option, but he would prefer a longer extension of the debt limit, White House spokesman Jay Carney said after the plan was disclosed. 
 
 Boehner did not immediately tell reporters specifics of the plan. But the speaker made clear that House Republicans were not agreeing to Obama’s demand that they pass legislation to fund the government without partisan riders, thereby ending the first government shutdown in 17 years. 
 
 [See the latest updates on the shutdown.] 
 
 In any case, Boehner’s proposal fell flat in the Senate, where members of both parties were clamoring to end the shutdown. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), speaking to reporters after a White House meeting between Obama and Senate Democrats, said the shutdown must end and the debt ceiling must be raised ahead of negotiations with the Republicans, who he complained keep changing their demands. 
 
 “This is a situation where they do not know what they want,” Reid said. His message to the GOP: “Open the government. Pay our bills. We’ll negotiate with you about anything.” Reid also said that Senate Democrats would “look at anything [House Republicans] send us,” but when asked about negotiating with them before reopening the government, he replied: “Not going to happen.” 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), meanwhile, was consulting fellow Republican senators to develop a proposal, advanced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), to end the shutdown and raise the federal debt limit for as long as three months. 
 
 The package sparked the first bipartisan negotiations since the standoff began in early September. But Collins’s proposal called for Democratic concessions including repeal of a tax on medical devices needed to fund Obama’s health-care initiative, and it would maintain deep budget cuts known sequestration through at least March. 
 
 The House GOP plan would suspend the debt limit until Nov. 22, the Friday before Thanksgiving, while also forbidding Treasury Secretary Jack Lew from using “extraordinary measures” that his department has used in recent years to extend his borrowing authority for weeks after the ceiling is reached, according to a senior GOP aide who was in the room. This creates a hard “X date,” as financial analysts call the issue, leaving no wiggle room beyond that day. 
 
 The House Republicans essentially are offering a “clean” debt-limit increase in exchange for negotiations over reopening the government, aides said. The government shutdown would not end until Obama agreed to “structural reforms” to the tax code and federal health programs. 
 
 The Republican plan for a six-week increase in the debt limit, without conservative strings attached, was aimed chiefly at calming jittery financial markets, according to senior GOP advisers. 
 
 Financial markets soared earlier Thursday on the first sign of optimistic news out of Washington in almost a month, with the Dow Jones industrial average up 169 points in the first 15 minutes of trading. The rally continued when Boehner confirmed the plan at an 11 a.m. press briefing, and by 1:30 p.m. the Dow was up more than 225 points. 
 
 The plan was presented to the House GOP caucus Thursday morning after Lew warned lawmakers that he would be unable to guarantee payments to any group — whether Social Security recipients or U.S. bondholders — unless Congress raises the federal debt ceiling. 
 
 If the GOP plan goes over well with rank-and-file Republicans, Boehner could put the legislation on the floor for a vote late Thursday, aides said. 
 
 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) described the plan at the news briefing as “a temporary extension of the debt ceiling in exchange for a real commitment by the president and the Senate majority leader to sit down and talk about the pressing problems” facing the country. Rep. Kevin McCarty (R-Calif.), the House majority whip, characterized these problems as “drivers” of increasing federal debt. 
 
 Obama has indicated he could support a short-term debt-limit hike, but he has also demanded that Republicans allow the government to reopen before he would negotiate with the GOP. 
 
 If the Republicans want to negotiate, they should “reopen the government, extend the debt ceiling,” Obama said last week. “If they can’t do it for a long time, do it for the period of time in which these negotiations are taking place.” 
 
 Carney, the White House spokesman, told reporters Thursday afternoon: “The president is happy that cooler heads at least seem to be prevailing in the House, that there at least seems to be a recognition that default is not an option.” However, Obama “believes it would be far better . . . to raise the debt ceiling for an extended period of time,” as Senate Democrats are proposing. 
 
 “It would be far better for the economy if we stopped this episodic brinksmanship and . . . mothballed the nuclear weapon here, which is the threat of default, for a longer duration,” Carney said. “But it is certainly at least an encouraging sign that . . . they are not listening to the debt-limit and default deniers.” If Republicans now recognize that default cannot be permitted, he added, “why keep the nuclear weapon in your back pocket?” 
 
 [Members of Congress are collecting pay during the shutdown.] 
 
 The first reactions from Republican House members appeared generally positive. But several insisted they would back the measure only with a commitment from the president to open negotiations over the next debt-ceiling hike. 
 
 “All we’re doing is saying, if the president hasn’t come towards us, we’ll just move the deadline out and offer it again,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.). “We haven’t changed our position. We’ve just changed the timeline.” 
 
 Fleming rejected the idea that the proposal represents a concession from Republicans. “Not really, if we get a concession from the president, to sit down and negotiate. If he doesn’t agree to that, I won’t agree to the debt ceiling.” 
 
 Meanwhile, several of the House’s most conservative members withheld comment about the proposal. “I’m not very enthusiastic,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said without elaborating. 
 
 Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, was noncommittal when asked about the plan and said his support depends on what happens in the meeting with the president Thursday. 
 
 “Some of this involves a conversation with the president,” Scalise said. “There’s nothing unilateral that can be done. It’s going to involve having the president finally put some things on the table of his own.” 
 
 Heritage Action for America, a conservative advocacy group influential with tea party Republicans, said Thursday that while it remains committed to fighting Obama’s health-care law and opposes “clean debt ceiling increases,” it wants to give House GOP leaders “the flexibility they need to refocus the debate on Obamacare.” Therefore, the group said, it will not include votes in favor of the proposal in its rankings of lawmakers’ conservatism. 
 
 The plan would meet Obama’s demand for an increase in Treasury’s borrowing authority without any legislative attachments. But it would set the stage for tough negotiations, possibly lasting until Thanksgiving, over bigger fiscal matters, since the tentative plan calls for only a six-week increase of the debt limit. 
 
 Advisers cautioned that Boehner’s often unruly caucus, which has repeatedly rejected leadership initiatives in the past, needs to sign off on the plan before it can advance. 
 
 Reacting to the GOP proposal, a White House official said: “It is better for economic certainty for Congress to take the threat of default off the table for as long as possible, which is why we support the Senate Democrats’ efforts to raise the debt limit for a year with no extraneous political strings attached.” 
 
 Obama also wants House Republicans to allow a vote on the “clean” government funding bill that has been passed by the Senate, the official said. “Once Republicans in Congress act to remove the threat of default and end this harmful government shutdown, the president will be willing to negotiate on a broader budget agreement,” the official added. “While we are willing to look at any proposal Congress puts forward to end these manufactured crises, we will not allow a faction of the Republicans in the House to hold the economy hostage to its extraneous and extreme political demands. Congress needs to pass a clean debt-limit increase and a funding bill to reopen the government.” 
 
 Financial experts much prefer a longer-term extension of the debt ceiling, but even a brief extension would ease some of the turmoil that has been brewing on Wall Street. By the time markets closed Monday afternoon, the Dow had dropped 900 points in 14 trading days, losing almost 6 percent of its value. 
 
 Just three weeks ago, Boehner’s leadership team presented a plan to lift the debt ceiling accompanied by a one-year delay of Obama’s health-care law and a litany of other conservative domestic policy demands. 
 
 With Washington in gridlock and a key deadline in the debt-limit debate just one week away, Lew told the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning that he would do all he can to minimize the pain of breaching the $16.7 trillion debt limit. But Lew also told the senators that in an unprecedented situation in which he would be relying entirely on the erratic flow of incoming revenue, the economy would suffer and there would not even be certainty that the government could make all interest and principal payments. 
 
 “No credible economist or business leader thinks that defaulting is good for job creation or economic growth,” Lew said. “If Congress fails to meet its responsibility, it could be deeply damaging to the financial markets, the ongoing economic recovery, and the jobs and savings of millions of Americans.” 
 
 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a key conservative with ties to leadership and more junior tea party-backed colleagues, said Thursday morning that he and his colleagues “potentially” could support the new GOP debt-ceiling plan. 
 
 “We think there needs to be some movement in dealing with the overall problem,” he said. “It’d be nice to get some dollar-to-dollar cuts there.” 
 
 Asked whether he could support a short-term increase without related cuts, Jordan said he expected that question would be the primary topic of conversation among House Republicans on Thursday. 
 
 Amid growing anxiety about a debt default, Republicans in the House and the Senate floated ideas Wednesday for raising the debt limit — if only for a short time — in hopes of forcing Obama to the negotiating table. 
 
 One of the most significant ideas was brewing in the House, Ryan briefed conservatives on a plan to raise the debt limit for six weeks, which would give party leaders time to negotiate a broad agreement to overhaul the tax code and trim federal health-care and retirement spending. 
 
 The plan, which Ryan sketched in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Wednesday, was short on details. And it called for spending cuts of roughly $200 billion to cover the cost of raising the debt limit even in the near term — although senior GOP advisers said late Wednesday that they were also considering an increase with no strings attached. 
 
 Lew’s appearance is the first public confrontation between a senior administration official and Republicans since the fiscal showdown began last month. The meeting comes as some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are questioning whether the administration has been too alarmist about the threat of going past an Oct. 17 deadline to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans have cited reports by credit-rating firms saying that the United States would not technically default unless it fails to make interest payments on its debt — which they regard as unlikely. 
 
 Echoing points made by Republican presidents and officials in prior administrations, Lew is tried to counter that argument by highlighting the broad risks of leaving the government with no borrowing authority. 
 
 “Certain members of the House and Senate believe that it is possible to protect our economy by simply paying only the interest on our debts, while stopping or delaying payments on a number of our other legal commitments,” Lew said. “The United States should not be put in a position of making such perilous choices for our economy and our citizens. There is no way of knowing the irrevocable damage such an approach would have on our economy and financial markets.” 
 
 For example, officials say, Lew pointed out that the Treasury routinely refinances about $100 billion in debt every week, paying back principal and taking on new debt. He noted that should investors back away from Treasury debt, it could make refinancing difficult and throw the country’s financial markets into even greater chaos. 
 
 Lew said the administration will face a series of difficult decisions even if Treasury can avoid what the credit-rating firms consider a default. In a scenario where federal spending will far exceed revenue, he said, the administration would have only imperfect options in deciding whom to pay. Officials say Lew will try to push Republicans to decide whom they wouldn’t pay — Social Security recipients or veterans. 
 
 “We are relying on investors from all over the world to continue to hold U.S. bonds . . .,” Lew said. “If U.S. bondholders decided that they wanted to be repaid rather than continuing to roll-over their Treasury investments, we could unexpectedly dissipate our entire cash balance.” 
 
 A Treasury official said Wednesday night that Obama would have to make the final decision in such a scenario. 
 
 Lew confronted a Senate Finance Committee stocked with Republicans who have been skeptical about the administration’s claims that breaching the debt limit would be catastrophic. 
 
 Among the committee’s members is Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who has championed the notion that the Treasury Department could avoid chaos in financial markets by continuing to make interest payments to investors. 
 
 The senior Republican on the panel, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), has also expressed doubts about the risk of a debt-ceiling breach. But on Wednesday, Hatch acknowledged that blowing the Oct. 17 deadline would “scare the hell out of people.” And while Treasury might be able to pay interest on the debt, Hatch said, “the real question is whether it’s going to tank the stock market.” 
 
 Obama, when he meets Thursday with House GOP leaders, is planning to emphasize his refusal to “pay ransom” to avoid default and reopen the government. Ryan, nonetheless, held out hope that the “meeting at the White House will allow us to work together and find common ground.” 
 
 Thursday’s meeting is the second in a series the White House announced Wednesday aimed at breaking the impasse, reopening the government and raising the $16.7 trillion debt limit. Obama met first with House Democrats late Wednesday and plans to meet with each party in the Senate in the coming days, starting with a meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus Thursday. 
 
 Obama invited the entire 233-member GOP House conference to join him at the White House, but Republicans decided to send only an 18-member group comprising top leaders and key committee chairmen, including Ryan, Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (Ky.) and Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (Mich.). 
 
 “Nine days into a government shutdown and a week away from breaching the debt ceiling, a meeting is only worthwhile if it is focused on finding a solution,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner, said in a statement. “That’s why the House Republican Conference will instead be represented by a smaller group of negotiators.” 
 
 The White House said Obama is “disappointed” by Boehner’s decision to limit Republican attendance and emphasized that Obama will not be negotiating. 
 
 “The president thought it was important to talk directly with the members who forced this economic crisis on the country about how the shutdown and a failure to pay the country’s bills could devastate the economy,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. 
 
 Obama “will talk to anyone anytime . . . but will not pay the Republicans ransom for doing their job,” Carney said. “If the Republicans want to have a real discussion, they should open the government and take the threat of default off the table.” 
 
 Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, circulated a memo from one of the nation’s leading credit-rating agencies that seemed to play down the threat of default. In the memo, Moody’s Investors Service said the Treasury Department is likely to continue paying interest on the government’s debt even if Congress refuses to lift the limit on borrowing, preserving the nation’s sterling AAA credit rating. 
 
 “We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact,” said the Oct. 7 memo. “The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.” 
 
 The memo offered a starkly different view of the consequences of breaching the debt limit than is held by the White House, many policymakers and other financial analysts. Over the weekend, economists at Goldman Sachs said the economy would take a devastating hit even if Treasury kept making payments on the debt, because the pullback in federal spending would amount to roughly $175 billion, or 4.2 percentage points of gross domestic product. 
 
 Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond company, agreed that the administration could take steps to contain the worst damage. But, he said, there would still be severe consequences. 
 
 “It would avoid a series of major and cascading disruptions to the functioning of a financial market that is at the heart of the core of the global financial system,” he said. “Having said that, equities and other risk assets would still likely sell off hard.” 
 
 Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) noted that Moody’s analysis is geared toward the well-being of its own investors, not average Americans. “When they say their clients will be okay, they’re not talking about people on Society Security, Medicare or our troops in the field. Moody’s doesn’t give a damn about any of those people.” 
 
 William Branigin, Rosalind S. Helderman and Scott Wilson contributed to this report. ||||| House Speaker John Boehner signaled a clash with the White House and the Democratic-led Senate over raising the U.S. borrowing authority later this year. 
 
 Congressional Republicans are staking their ground in fiscal negotiations that once again could pose the threat of default or a government shutdown -- the recurring theme surrounding efforts to reduce the nation’s deficit since 2011. 
 
 “We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending,” Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters in Washington yesterday. President Barack Obama and Senate leaders are refusing to accept anything short of a clean debt-limit increase. 
 
 “We will not negotiate over Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills that Congress ran up,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said when asked about Boehner’s remarks. 
 
 Any discussion about raising the debt ceiling must start with the premise that “we are the United States; we do not default,” Carney said. “The president believes Republican leaders share that conviction.” 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said yesterday that Democrats are “not negotiating on the debt ceiling.” 
 
 Congress should pass a debt-ceiling increase without any “hijinks” to ensure a stable economy, Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, told reporters July 18. “Attaching other issues to the debt ceiling is playing with fire,” he said. 
 
 Photographer: Susan Walsh/AP Photo House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio arrives for a news conference on Capitol Hill. Close House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio arrives for a news conference on Capitol Hill. Close Open Photographer: Susan Walsh/AP Photo House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio arrives for a news conference on Capitol Hill. 
 
 ‘Significant Cuts’ 
 
 Boehner said Congress needs to find “significant cuts” in federal spending to replace $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending reductions over nine years. Republicans also say they’re determined to make changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. 
 
 Republican leaders have weighed whether to spell out the steps and timing of a tax-code rewrite as a trigger for raising the U.S. borrowing limit. Their goal is to curb tax breaks and use the resulting revenue to lower rates. 
 
 House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said he’s been working “for a long time” on a package of spending cuts and government overhauls to be timed with the debt-limit increase. The former vice presidential candidate didn’t provide details. A 2014 budget blueprint he proposed would balance the budget in 10 years. 
 
 Treasury Notes 
 
 Lawmakers fought for months two years ago over raising the nation’s debt limit, with Obama signing an increase into law on Aug. 2, 2011, the day the Treasury Department warned that U.S. borrowing authority would expire. 
 
 After Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its AAA top credit rating, the interest rate paid to finance the budget deficit dropped rather than rose. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes on Aug. 5, 2011, when S&P announced the downgrade, was 2.56 percent. The yield fell as low as 1.39 percent on July 24, 2012. As of yesterday, the yield had risen to 2.50 percent amid speculation the Federal Reserve is closer to winding down its asset-purchase program. 
 
 Lawmakers’ negotiations led to the Budget Control Act of 2011, which set discretionary spending caps for 10 years and created a process that resulted in the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. The cuts started in March. 
 
 With the possibility of a fight over the debt limit after the five-week congressional recess that starts in August, Democrats said they worry about repeating the events of 2011. 
 
 ‘Drawing Lines’ 
 
 “It sure will sooner or later create a crisis situation,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview at the Capitol. “It’s that kind of total rigidity that makes it very difficult to get things done: throwing down the gauntlet here and just drawing lines in the sand.” 
 
 The need to increase the nation’s borrowing authority will collide with negotiations to fund the government for the 2014 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Negotiations will be centered on reducing the deficit and finding ways to replace the spending cuts. 
 
 Congress will have to first approve a short-term stopgap measure to fund the government instead of the regular appropriations bills because the work on those won’t be completed before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Even the short-term measure could be a heavy lift because Reid said he won’t accept a stopgap measure at the lower sequestration levels. 
 
 Senate Democrats instead want to replace the automatic, across-the-board cuts with a mix of spending cuts and tax revenue. 
 
 The White House Office of Management and Budget, which enforces the spending cuts, has projected the caps in 2014 would be $967.4 billion for security and non-security spending unless the sequester is repealed. 
 
 ‘Disaster’ 
 
 Funding at the lower levels “would be a disaster for the country, and I would do everything within my ability to oppose that,” Reid told reporters. 
 
 The economy is showing signs of generating more revenue, even if the recovery is sluggish. 
 
 Government tax receipts have climbed 14 percent above the level a year ago, according to Alex Brill, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who was interviewed by Bloomberg BNA. Economists credit economic growth as well as additional revenue from the tax increase Congress passed early this year. 
 
 The Congressional Budget Office projected in May that federal tax receipts would climb from $2.45 trillion in 2012 to $2.81 trillion in 2013, and to $3.78 trillion by 2017. 
 
 Earlier Vote 
 
 Congress voted at the end of January to suspend the nation’s debt limit until May 19, temporarily removing the risk of a default. When the ceiling was restored May 19, it increased to $16.7 trillion to reflect the government’s borrowing during the past few months. 
 
 By shifting money among government accounts, the Treasury Department can continue borrowing for several months, perhaps as late as October or November. 
 
 In May, House Republicans voted to exempt federal payments to creditors from the U.S. debt limit. The House measure would ensure that U.S. government bondholders will continue to be paid and that Social Security benefits won’t be interrupted if a standoff over the nation’s debt limit causes a cash crunch. The Obama administration would be left to decide which of the government’s other bills to pay using tax revenue. 
 
 The Democratic-controlled Senate didn’t take up the bill. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Roxana Tiron in Washington at rtiron@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net ||||| Crafting a workable funding deal to resurrect the government "isn't some damn game," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said late last week. And as lawmakers take to Capitol Hill on Monday - seven days after the partial shutdown began and 10 out from potentially defaulting on their loans - that much is clear: The two parties can't even seem to find the same playing field. 
 
 Boehner: Government shutdown is not "some damn game" 
 
 Over the weekend, Republicans and Democrats hit the Sunday show circuit to continue their infinite round of finger-pointing, offering no indication that either party will head into week two of the shutdown wielding concessions toward a plan that would get 800,000 furloughed government employees back to work. In an interview that aired on ABC's "This Week," Boehner maintained the GOP position that Democrats must agree to partially dismantling or delaying President Obama's health care law as a condition of re-opening the government; various Democrats, for their part, continued to flatly reject that option. 
 
 Now barreling toward an Oct. 17 deadline to raise the debt ceiling or face a first-ever default on its financial obligations, Congress has several possible scenarios unfolding on the road ahead, hinging entirely on the bullheadedness of Republicans, Democrats or both. 
 
 Will Democrats cave? 
 
 Congressional Democrats aren't going to show up for work Monday with the announcement that they're suddenly on board with delaying or stripping down the president's Affordable Care Act as a proviso of reopening the government. Even if they did, they'd find themselves fumbling for any real effect, considering a major portion of "Obamacare" actually activated last Tuesday. 
 
 Government shutdown: By the numbers 
 
 A few House Democrats, though, suggested last week they could go for a smaller-scale alteration. Twenty-some lawmakers from both the right and left appeared at a press conference Thursday pushing a proposal that would repeal the health care law's 2.3 percent tax on medical device sales with the qualification that Republican lawmakers would sign onto a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government afloat. 
 
 It's a long shot. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., whose own outlook on the tax has become somewhat muddied, called the plan "an act of desperation;" his colleague Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., cautioned that such a repeal would set a troubling precedent. 
 
 "The hard right says 'see, by holding a gun to their heads, we got something that we wanted. We'll up the ante this time,'" Schumer said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "So it's not the specific proposal - the device tax doesn't seem like that much of Obamacare - it's the method: we're going to threaten and shut the government down until you agree with us. 
 
 "...You can't call for that legislative blackmail or it will get worse and worse and worse." 
 
 Centrist Republicans could rally 
 
 There are some Republicans who are just as unhappy with their party's strings-attached strategy as Democrats are. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in a floor speech last month effectively called for an end to the Republican crusade, reminding his colleagues that "the people spoke" on healthcare when they elected Mr. Obama in 2008 - and again, in 2012. 
 
 On Friday House Democrats began circulating a "discharge petition" which, if signed by a majority of House members, could force a vote on a spending bill to reopen the government. It was a direct counter to Boehner, who under the gun of his party's rightmost wing maintains that his chamber doesn't have the votes for the Democrat-proposed "clean" bill, which would fund the government without any miscellaneous baggage - like provisions to alter "Obamacare" - attached. 
 
 Lew: Raise debt ceiling to avoid default "abyss" 
 
 "Well then why doesn't he put it on the floor and give it a chance?" Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Sunday on "Face the Nation," challenging Boehner to allow the House vote one way or another. "There's a majority in Congress that I believe is prepared to do the right thing, to open the government and make sure we don't cross over that abyss." 
 
 Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reiterated that sentiment on ABC, hinting that enough Republicans could peel off to push through a clean funding bill. 
 
 "The speaker said there aren't the votes on the floor to re-open the government," Schumer said. "Let me issue him a friendly challenge: put it on the floor Monday or Tuesday. I would bet there are the votes to pass it. We have just about every Democrat, 21 Republicans have publicly said they would. There are many more Republicans who have said that they privately would. So, Speaker Boehner, just vote. Put it on the floor and let's see if you're right." 
 
 The feud roils on 
 
 OK so, it's Oct. 17, the government is still shut down and now Congress is about to default on its loans because Republicans and Democrats are still playing chicken with the country's money. Now what? 
 
 "Nothing good," Lew said on "Face the Nation." Even with minor savings from the shutdown, the Treasury Department - still responsible for Social Security, Medicare, and military payments - would likely exhaust its bank account by Nov. 1. 
 
 According to a report from the New York Times, Boehner has said he will not let the nation default on its debt and will be willing to put a bill on the House floor to raise the debt ceiling, even if it doesn't have the support of a majority of his caucus. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck told CBS News that Boehner doesn't want to default, but denied that Boehner plans to pass a debt limit bill with Democratic votes. 
 
 But even with Boehner rallying behind a no-default poster, it's not that easy. 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who last week pulled off an epic, 21-plus-hour floor speech in protest of the president's healthcare law, suggested to CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that he plans to carry his anti-"Obamacare" campaign into the debt limit fight, suggesting legislation to raise the debt ceiling could be the best leverage Congress has to modify the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 A grand bargain? 
 
 It's unlikely, but at this point, it's about as realistic as anything else. 
 
 According to Politico, Boehner posited the idea of a grand deal that wraps up a spending bill, a debt limit increase and other fiscal policies into one neat package during a meeting at the White House with Mr. Obama. And, "everybody laughed at him because they've heard this song and dance so many times before," said a Democratic aide briefed on the gathering. 
 
 Still, the idea might be gaining traction among some Republicans, even though no one in GOP leadership seems to be broaching the subject. 
 
 Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, explained to Politico the appeal of a grand bargain: "We're getting closer to the point that everything's intertwined -- government funding, the debt ceiling and spending -- and so the best way out, I believe, and the only way for everybody to find an acceptable long-term solution is a big negotiation of everything that includes something on entitlements, tax reform, something on a spending level and wrap it in one box."
– See if this sounds familiar: The White House and House Republicans appear headed toward a standoff over the debt ceiling this fall, reports NBC News. That's after John Boehner's statement this morning: “We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without real cuts in spending. It's as simple as that.” Democrats such as Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer said last week that Congress should pass an extension of the debt ceiling without strings attached, reports Bloomberg. Both sides appear to be jockeying for public opinion, with Boehner getting out ahead of President Obama's planned speeches on the economy starting tomorrow, reports the Hill. Boehner warned that Obama would be laying the ground for tax hikes. Treasury chief Jack Lew says the nation has enough money to operate without new borrowing until about Labor Day.