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. 
 
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 reset Boehner offers temporary debt hike Lew warns about debt ceiling 
 
 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. 
 
 Follow @politico ||||| NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Major U.S. stock markets surged Thursday after investors cheered a possible short-term agreement between Republicans and Democrats to raise the nation's borrowing limit. 
 
 
 
 The S&P 500 advanced 2.2% to 1,692.56, the benchmark's biggest jump since January 2. 
 
 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner urged his Republican colleagues to agree to a short-term debt ceiling increase, while White House Press Secretary Jay Carney didn't signal that President Obama would reject the plan. 
 
 
 
 "History has proven time and again that the system is stronger and more resilient than the politicians and we are confident that this again will be the case," J. Wesley Clayton, managing director and founder of HighTower's Twickenham Wealth Advisors in Huntsville, AL commented in an email. "We always take a longer term view of the markets, and the current version of proven political incompetence to solve problems effectively suggests that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 
 
 The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2.2% to 15,176.07 while the Nasdaq added 2.3% to 3,760.75. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Best Buy (BBY) shares soared 7.6% to $39 after Stifel Nicolaus reported that consumer interest in shopping at the electronics retail chain appears to be improving at a steady pace with late September and early October data showing high single digit year-over-year improvements. Separately, the company is reportedly getting ready to launch a trade-in offer that would allow customers to trade in a working smartphone for a $100 gift card that could go toward the purchase of the new Apple AAPL iPhone 5s and 5c smartphones. 
 
 Gilead Sciences (GILD) jumped 6.5% to $62.74 after the Foster City, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company said that it was able to stop clinical trials of the experimental idelalisib drug after an independent committee said that there was sufficient data to show that the treatment is effective in preventing the progression of illness in chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients who are not fit for chemotherapy. 
 
 shares gained 5.4% to $303.99 afteranalysts initiated coverage of the movie and TV show streaming service with a "buy" explaining that it is the best way to play global broadband growth over the next five years. 
 
 was the worst performer on the S&P 500 after the company cut its third-quarter revenue and earnings per share projections . Shares of the IT services company plunged 11.9% to $58.75 
 
 Treasury Secretary Jack Lew set a do-or-die tone early in the day when he appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to warn lawmakers that a failure to reach an agreement would risk the U.S. falling short on payments to public programs such as Social Security and to global creditors.Lew said the country shouldn't have to be put in a position where it has to pick and choose which principal and interest payments can be fulfilled and which ones must be delayed. "There is no way of knowing the irrevocable damage such an approach would have on our economy and financial markets," Lew said. 
 
 The nomination of Janet Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke as the chief of thecontinued to resonate with investors on hopes that her appointment would guarantee a smooth transition at the helm of the central bank and a mild, incremental unwinding of the central bank's massive bond-buying program.The market has been deprived of key economic data since the government shutdown began 10 days ago. However, Thursday brought the weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department. An increase to 374,000 from 308,000 was reported. Economists are expecting an increase to 310,000. 
 
 The benchmark 10-year Treasury was down 9/32, raising the yield to 2.695%. 
 
 -- Written by Andrea Tse in New York 
 
 >To contact the writer of this article, click here: Andrea Tse .> ||||| “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. ||||| Still, the House Republican offer represented a potentially significant breakthrough. Even if Democrats found fault with the Republicans’ immediate proposal — for example, it would prevent the Treasury secretary from engaging in accounting maneuvers to stave off potential default — it was seen as an opening gambit in the legislative dance toward some resolution before the government is expected to breach its debt limit on Thursday. 
 
 Even before the meeting, the White House and its Democratic allies in Congress were all but declaring victory at the evidence that Republicans — suffering the most in polls, and pressured by business allies and donors not to provoke a government default — were seeking a way out of the impasse. 
 
 After some fretful weeks, the Democrats believe, Mr. Obama was seeing some payoff for his big gamble this year. Burned by his experience with House Republicans in mid-2011, when brinkmanship over the debt limit hobbled the already weak economy, Mr. Obama began his second term vowing never again to negotiate over raising the ceiling or to give any concessions to Republicans for performing an act that is their constitutional responsibility. 
 
 “The good news is that Republicans have accepted the principle that they’re not going to attach conditions to the debt ceiling,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “The bad news is they’ve only extended the debt ceiling for six weeks.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 For House Republicans, the maneuvers represented a near-reversal of their original strategy in September of going to the mat over the debt limit but not shutting down the government. Now, under pressure from falling poll numbers and angry business supporters, they are seeking a compromise on the debt ceiling. Yet for now, they are still refusing to finance and reopen the government without some concessions. 
 
 Mr. Boehner and his colleagues left the White House without speaking to waiting reporters, and quickly gathered in his Capitol suite for further discussion. Their debt limit proposal could come to a vote as soon as Friday. 
 
 Before the White House meeting, administration and Congressional Democrats said they were skeptical that House Republican leaders could pass the proposal. A large faction of Tea Party conservatives campaigned on promises never to vote to increase the nation’s debt limit. And Congressional Democrats vowed to oppose any proposal that did not also fully finance a government now shuttered since the fiscal year began Oct. 1. 
 
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 “We’ll see what they’re able to pass,” said Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney. 
 
 Senate Democrats had their own White House meeting with Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. three hours before the House Republicans arrived, and the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, declined to embrace the Republicans’ debt limit proposal until he saw it. He told reporters that Democrats would not negotiate on further deficit reductions until House Republicans agreed to the measure passed by the Senate to finance and open the government through mid-November. 
 
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 “Not going to happen,” Mr. Reid said. “Open the government,” he added. “There is so much pain and suffering out there. It is really tear-jerking, to say the least.” 
 
 Separately, members of the Senate’s Republican minority, who are to meet with Mr. Obama on Friday, worked on a proposal for full-year government funding — at levels reflecting the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, but giving agencies flexibility to shift money around. They are considering adding it to any short-term debt limit increase that the House might pass and send to the Senate. 
 
 Mr. Ryan said before the White House meeting that Republicans were now willing to formally negotiate with Senate Democrats over a long-term, comprehensive budget framework. The Republicans have resisted such a move since April, fearing that it would require compromises, like raising additional tax revenues, that would enrage the party’s conservative base heading into the 2014 midterm elections. 
 
 Many House Republicans, leaving a closed-door party caucus earlier Thursday that at times grew contentious, said they would support their leadership’s short-term debt limit proposal. But they said they would do so only if Mr. Obama agreed to negotiate a broader deficit reduction deal, with big savings from entitlement programs. 
 
 The president has insisted he will not agree to significant reductions in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending — even his own tentative proposals — unless Republicans agree to raise revenues by curbing tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals. And Mr. Boehner in recent days reaffirmed the party’s anti-tax stance, which suggests that future talks could founder. 
 
 Economists across a broad spectrum agree that breaching the debt limit would damage the economy. The new Republican proposal could temporarily remove that threat.
– President Obama and congressional Republicans groped today for a compromise to avert an unprecedented US default and end the 10-day-old government shutdown. "We expect further conversations tonight," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said cryptically at nightfall, after he, Speaker John Boehner and a delegation of other Republicans met for more than an hour with Obama at the White House. The White House issued a statement describing the session as a good one, but adding, "no specific determination was made." Yet it seemed the endgame was at hand in the crises that have bedeviled the divided government for weeks. Both sides expressed fresh hopes for a resolution soon. Washington Post: "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." New York Times: "An initial report that Mr. Obama had rejected the Republicans’ offer was too definitive and came before Republican leaders or the White House had made it clear to reporters that the negotiations would continue." Politico: "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. A GOP aide said they would seek some additional concessions if they advance a government funding bill next week." Even the hint of progress sent stocks soaring today.