N.Y. TIMES
House Republicans, increasingly isolated from even some of their strongest supporters more than a week into a government shutdown, began to consider a path out of the fiscal impasse that would raise the debt ceiling for a few weeks as they press for a broader deficit reduction deal.
That approach could possibly set aside the fight over the new health care law, which prompted the shutdown and which some Republicans will be reluctant to abandon.
In a meeting with the most ardent House conservatives, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, laid out a package focused on an overhaul of Medicare and a path toward a comprehensive simplification of the tax code.
“We’re more in the ideas stage right now,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. “There is a developing consensus that this is a lot bigger than an Obamacare discussion.”
At the same time, Congressional leaders from both parties began some preliminary discussions aimed at reopening the government and raising the statutory borrowing limit. And President Obama, who invited House Democrats on Wednesday, asked all House Republicans to the White House on Thursday, an invitation Speaker John A. Boehner whittled down to a short list of attendees he wants to negotiate a compromise.
Democrats showed their own cracks. Twenty-six House Democrats planned to attend a bipartisan event on Thursday morning with the group No Labels, calling for negotiations to start immediately, a challenge to the president and to Democratic leaders who say they will not negotiate until the government reopens and the debt ceiling is lifted.
In the meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday evening, Mr. Obama held firm to his stated intention to negotiate with Republicans only after the government is reopened and the debt ceiling is raised. He told Democrats that if he gives in now, Republican demands would be endless. “The only thing not on their list is my own resignation,” he told Democrats, according to a lawmaker in the room.
With the impact of the shutdown starting to intensify, House Republicans were taking criticism from some of their longtime backers. Business groups demanded the immediate reopening of the government, and benefactors like Koch Industries publicly distanced themselves from the shutdown fight.
Republicans acknowledged the pressure is mounting on them. On Wednesday, the National Retail Federation joined other reliably Republican business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers in asking House Republicans to relent.
-----
Members suggested they could get behind a lifting of the debt ceiling for several weeks to allow Republicans to unite around a deficit reduction and tax overhaul package.
-----
But, [the conservative Republican Study Committee leader, Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana ] said, even that should have spending cuts attached. He also said that a debt-ceiling increase of even three weeks should include a measure passed by the House denying federal subsidies to congressmen, White House officials and their staff members, who already must buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s new exchanges. And, he suggested, conservatives might insist on another House bill that would allow the Treasury to borrow enough money to pay off debts as they become due, taking away the threat of a government default.
All of those measures would be stiffly resisted by Senate Democrats and the White House.
Still, lawmakers did appear to be looking for a way forward after days of simply staring at one another....Mr. Obama invited all House Republicans to a get-together on Thursday. Mr. Boehner saw a meeting between the president and 232 Republicans as a photo opportunity with no chance of producing substantive discussions. So he reduced the invitation list to 18. That will at least give the appearance of negotiations if it fails to prompt actual substantive talks.