'We can’t fight on two fronts,' Speaker John Boehner says. Obama to GOP: What'll it take?

President Barack Obama and House Republicans clashed in a meeting Thursday afternoon over how soon the government can be reopened, even as the GOP offered to lift the debt limit for six weeks, according to sources familiar with the session.

House Republicans told Obama at the White House that they could reopen the federal government by early next week if the president and Senate Democrats agree to their debt-ceiling proposal. After the debt ceiling is lifted, a House GOP aide said they would seek some additional concessions in a government funding bill.


Obama repeatedly pressed House Republicans to open the government, asking them “what’s it going to take to” end the shutdown, those sources said. He questioned why the government should remain closed if both sides agreed to engage in good-faith negotiations on the budget, according to a Democratic source briefed on the meeting.

( WATCH: 10 great quotes on debt ceiling fight)

The meeting was described by both sides as cordial but inconclusive. Obama acknowledged to Republicans that notable progress had been made. Sources described the meeting without attribution, because the meeting was private.

Aides will continue the discussion through the night to see if they could find common ground on how to move forward on the debt limit and government funding. The short-term debt hike — which was originally proposed at the closed GOP meeting Thursday — did not include plans to reopen the government.

Obama agreed to review the House Republican proposal for reopening the government, but reiterated that he wouldn’t pay a ransom, the Democratic source said.

At the meeting, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) described the Republicans’ process as being two steps: passing the debt ceiling bill, and then opening a broad budget conference before the government can be reopened.

( PHOTOS: 18 times the government has shut down)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew that this was a “good-faith” effort by Republicans. Ryan said both sides should “put their guns back in their holsters” — a bid to reach an agreement to avoid default, reopen the government and start broader budget talks.

Biden was mostly quiet in the meeting but did say at one point that Obama has made concessions as president that he hasn’t seen in 36 years in the Senate.

Publicly, House Republicans were mum when they returned to the Capitol.

“We had a very useful meeting,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said, upon returning from the White House Thursday evening. “It was clarifying I think for both sides as to where we are and the takeaway from the meeting was, our teams are going to be talking further tonight, we’ll have more discussion, we’ll come back to have more discussion. The president said that he would go and consult with the administration folks and hopefully we can see a way forward after that.”

( PHOTOS: Debt ceiling fight: 20 great quotes)

A senior House GOP aide said Obama “did not say yes or no to House Republicans’ offer.” Both sides are continuing talks tonight, according to the aide.

The White House said Obama had a “good meeting” with House Republican leaders that lasted about 90 minutes.

“After a discussion about potential paths forward, no specific determination was made,” according to a White House readout. “The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle.”

For much of Thursday, it appeared that Washington slowly edged away from a potential default on Thursday as congressional leaders crafted plans to raise the debt ceiling ahead of the Oct. 17 deadline. Wall Street liked the apparent legislative movement: The Dow Industrial Average soared 323 points Thursday.

( POLITICO's full government shutdown coverage)

Obama met separately with Senate Democrats and House Republicans at the White House. Senate Republicans will meet with Obama on Friday morning.

The talk in the House GOP visit centered around Speaker John Boehner’s proposed measure to lift the debt ceiling through Nov. 22, while banning Treasury from employing so-called extraordinary measures to keep paying the nation’s bills. The legislation had no corresponding spending cuts, as other debt ceiling bills had.

The legislation would also set up a negotiation over the borrowing cap and government funding. At this time, there are no spending cuts attached to the legislation. There is also no vote scheduled.

If Obama buys into the GOP plan, senior Republican sources say that Boehner could have enough internal political capital to move a bill next week to reopen government until Nov. 22.

Across the Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is taking the temperature of his own GOP colleagues on ways to reopen the government — which has been shuttered for 10 days — and raise the debt ceiling.

Among the options under consideration is a proposal building on the work of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would raise the limit for two months and reopen the government for six months in return for a repeal of Obamacare’s medical device tax, a requirement to means test those seeking Obamacare subsidies and provide more flexibility for agencies to maneuver around the sequester.

Though ideas to move on from the budget mess are growing, there’s no consensus yet. A White House official sounded cool to the House GOP plan and offered support for a Senate Democratic proposal to raise the debt ceiling through the end of 2014, reiterating that the government should reopen and the debt ceiling be raised ahead of any talks.

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“The President has made clear that he will not pay a ransom for Congress doing its job and paying our bills,” the official said. “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.”

But the administration didn’t say it was firmly against the House GOP plan and White House press secretary Jay Carney sounded an optimistic note.

“The president is happy that cooler heads at least seem to be prevailing in the House,” Carney said.

Boehner’s latest gambit isn’t exactly a magic bullet.

It’s a bet that President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders will want so desperately to avoid a cataclysmic debt default that they will backtrack on their refusal to negotiate with Republicans and open broad budget talks.

For Boehner, it’s a recognition of the political reality that he can’t engage in an increasingly long and grinding high-stakes government funding battle — now in its 10th day — while also threatening the creditworthiness of the United States. The Ohio Republican wants to try to shift the onus to Obama and Democrats on these two explosive issues. Republicans say they are unlikely to keep government closed until Nov. 22.

“We can’t fight on two fronts,” Boehner told the meeting of House Republicans on Thursday morning. After the meeting, Boehner said, “It’s time for these negotiations and these conversations to begin.”

“I would hope that the president will look at this as an opportunity and a good faith effort on our part to move halfway — halfway to what he’s demanded — in order to have these conversations begin,” Boehner said.

After meeting with Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Senate Democrats would “look at anything” the House sends over.

But when asked about whether he would negotiate before the shutdown ends, he responded: “Not going to happen.”

Other Democrats expressed skepticism after meeting with Obama.

“What is the House proposal?” asked Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. “Because it changes every five minutes. We will wait until they hand us something that represents either what they can pass in the House or what they can agree to in the House.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was also dubious.

“It’ll probably change before it’s ever voted on,” Baucus said. “I’d like to see the debt limit increased. Longer is better than shorter. But shorter is better than nothing.”

Reid and Obama are unsure whether Boehner can actually push his proposal through the House in the first place. They aren’t convinced tea party-aligned House Republicans won’t balk, forcing Boehner to turn to House Democrats for support. But any Democratic support would be tied to reopening the government.

Leadership allies say the GOP plan will pass the House. There’s not much room for error. If House Democrats do not support the package, Boehner and his leadership team can only afford 16 GOP defections to pass the bill.

But the move by Boehner, Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California immediately drew skeptics after the roughly 90-minute meeting.

“A lot depends on what’s going to come out of the meeting today at the White House,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), one of McCarthy’s deputy whips.

Asked what his reservations are about the plan, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said there are “a lot of them.”

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said it “really depends on what the president says today. So far he’s refused to have a conversation.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was also far from sold.

“I’m looking for something that shows we’re recognizing the problem facing America because of our debt and we’re going to address it,” Brooks said.

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) said, “I can’t commit to it yet. Let’s see what the president has to say.”

So far, Obama and Democrats have been crystal clear: They will not negotiate on any package until both government is open and the debt ceiling has been hiked.

“It doesn’t solve the problem,” Rep. Raul Grijalva said. “It avoids one tremendous crisis, but it’s short term and then the extortion will begin on when we open the government and what it will take for us to give in.”

Rep. Steve Israel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he wouldn’t reject the GOP proposal “out of hand.”

“But it seems to be basic fairness that if you’re going to extend the ceiling that you should also open the doors,” the New York Democrat said. “I just do not understand that Republicans think they can do one without the other.”

The next few weeks are going to be wild on Capitol Hill. House GOP leadership announced on Thursday that the House will vote Monday evening — Columbus Day — and “should be prepared to be in session all week and possibly into the weekend.”

Senate Democrats are operating on an entirely different track, proceeding toward a Saturday vote on a plan to raise the debt ceiling through 2014 and daring Senate Republicans to deny them the six GOP votes needed to advance their bill. A filibuster of this legislation would likely roil financial markets, warned Reid.

“Yesterday government bonds were considered the safest investment in the world. Will it be so tomorrow?” Reid asked on the floor Thursday morning.

Jonathan Allen, Seung Min Kim, Carrie Budoff Brown and Ginger Gibson contributed to this report.