John Boehner privately told conservatives that they should feel relieved. | John Shinkle/POLITICO The GOP's debt ceiling surrender

Less than three years ago, House Speaker John Boehner boldly demanded “trillions” in spending cuts in exchange for raising the national borrowing limit.

“Let me be as clear as I can be,” Boehner told the Economic Club of New York in May 2011. “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase.”


But on Tuesday, everything changed.

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Boehner violated his own rule by allowing the White House to win a year-long increase of the debt ceiling — with no strings attached. Senate Republican leaders urged their members to allow a quick final vote on Wednesday and drop filibuster attempts to prolong the debate. In a private lunch, Senate Republicans were more concerned about “getting the hell out of town” before an impending snowstorm than digging in on a fight they once relished, according to a GOP senator.

And Boehner even privately told conservatives Tuesday they should be relieved because the concession got the “monkey off our backs,” sources said.

The sharp shift in tactics within the House and Senate GOP caucuses reflects a hardening realization after three years of partisan brinkmanship over the budget: Fighting over the debt in a crisis-like atmosphere is a political loser.

( PHOTOS: 25 great shutdown quotes)

“I’m one who truly believes that if we get this issue behind us, and behave ourselves, we’ll be in the majority here on this side, in the next six months,” said Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

The White House refused to negotiate over a debt ceiling hike. That left Republican leaders with a choice: Tie provisions like the Keystone pipeline or Obamacare changes to a debt hike to rally the rank and file or capitulate to Democrats and move past the fight.

Choosing the first option wasn’t attractive since several dozen hard-line conservatives in the House would never vote to raise the debt ceiling, meaning the GOP wouldn’t be able to push through a bill on its own. And with only 45 seats in the Senate, Republicans there weren’t in a better position to drive policy.

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Not wanting to relive a debt-crisis similar to the 16-day October government shutdown, which polls showed hurt Republicans, Boehner had little leverage to exact policy concessions from Democrats.

And with Republicans betting their 2014 election hopes on the ongoing problems with Obamacare, it made little sense to GOP leaders to engage in a divisive intraparty battle that they would likely lose.

”We could’ve asked for a copy machine and the president would’ve been willing to default on the debt just to make a political point,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), who voted against the bill. “I think that’s shameful.”

Since the October deal to reopen the government, which also effectively raised the debt ceiling through this month, Republicans have increasingly buckled on budget matters. They agreed to Democratic demands to raise discretionary spending caps in a two-year budget deal, something that led to the quick approval of a $1.1 trillion spending package last month.

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“The shutdown politics was not good for those of us who care about deficit reduction,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

Boehner long ago recognized the shifting dynamics of these fiscal fights: the Senate and White House were holding strong, and he likely couldn’t fight that. There was no way he would propose a “clean” debt-ceiling increase to House Republicans at the beginning of this fight — even though senior members of leadership knew that’s where they would end up. Instead, they cycled through a host of options, demonstrating that none had support.

Going back-and-forth over a variety of options infuriated several figures in the conference — including some in and around his own leadership table — who hated to see their party struggle to coalesce around a proposal in plain view. But Boehner was ultimately successful — perhaps for the first time — at avoiding the messy brinksmanship that typically mark these fights.

On Monday evening, after Republican whips circled the House floor, it was clear that the last-ditch, Hail Mary option — tying a debt ceiling increase to restoring pension cuts to future military retirees — also had little support.

When GOP leaders entered into the Capitol Hill Club Tuesday morning for a political meeting, they knew they would deliver the news that a clean debt ceiling increase was the only option. When Boehner announced that the House would vote on the debt ceiling hike, he asked hardliners why they weren’t clapping for getting the “monkey off our backs.”

By Tuesday evening, Republicans had more support than they expected. The House GOP started off the day pessimistic about their ability to garner at least 20 Republican votes. But as the day went on, the count rose from the 20-vote range and surprisingly got better. Some rank and file lawmakers decided to be team players, a few fence sitters sided with Boehner and there were even more votes Republicans thought they could flip if needed.

Still, that didn’t stop the tension. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were screaming at each other on the floor. A spokesman for Hoyer said they were “just comparing notes.”

Ultimately 28 Republicans joined with 193 Democrats to pass the debt ceiling hike, with only two Democrats and a resounding 199 Republicans opposing the measure.

“As I said before, this is a lost opportunity,” Boehner told reporters Tuesday morning. “We could have sat down and worked together in a bipartisan manner to find cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit. It would’ve helped us to begin to solve the spending problem we have, begin the process of paying down our debt and so I am disappointed, to say the least.”

While a few conservative lawmakers and activists were angry at Boehner’s move — violating both his own debt-ceiling rule and the so-called Hastert Rule allowing only votes that would be supported by a majority of the majority party — Democrats praised the speaker’s handling of the sensitive issue.

“I have to give him credit for his courtesy to me. He will call and say, ‘This is what we think we can put forth, I need help to pass,’” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told POLITICO of her interaction with Boehner on the debt ceiling. “I have been very clear that we are only supporting a clean debt ceiling.”

On the Senate side, Republicans were eager to get the matter taken care of, as well. Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said it “makes sense to me” to allow the matter to pass quickly with 51 votes. The lower-threshold would let all Republicans vote against the plan, as opposed to the 60-vote filibuster threshold that would require the support of at least five Republicans — and potentially several days — to overcome.

“I know we’ve got a big storm approaching, and flights being canceled, plus I think people feel like it’s inevitable that we’re going to have to act on the debt ceiling,” Cornyn said. “So the question is do you want to do it now? Or put it off?”

The issue was debated repeatedly during a 90-minute Senate GOP lunch off the floor on Tuesday, but GOP senators said the overwhelming consensus was to put an end to the partisan brinksmanship.

Some conservatives clearly weren’t happy, but it was unclear how far they’d go to put up a fight. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the architect of the fight over the government shutdown, said he would insist on a 60-vote threshold — but didn’t seem willing to keep the Senate in session through the weekend to clear procedural hoops.

“The precise timing is not terribly consequential, whether the vote is tomorrow or the next day,” Cruz said. “What matters is the threshold of 60 votes.”

Still, conservatives have hardly waged a campaign to stop the debt ceiling hike “because there’s no consensus on exactly what ‘dig in’ means,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said.

Besides, McCain said, it hardly made sense to repeat a mistake he believes his party made during the shutdown.

“What has happened over the last year is the American people overwhelmingly rejected the shutdown of the government,” McCain said. “Obamacare saved us because it shifted the attention to the Obamacare rollout. … So that has been an object lesson to Republicans.”

John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.