House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that he wants to have a "conversation" with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats over the government shutdown and looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling.
"I want to have a conversation, I'm not drawing any lines in the sand," he said at a press conference, alongside other members of GOP leadership. "There's no boundaries here, there's nothing on the table, there's nothing off the table."
Comments from Boehner and his colleagues indicated that they are still hoping to win concessions from Democrats on Obamacare and the deficit in any deal to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling.
He declined to answer a question about whether the House would back a short-term debt limit increase. "I'm not going to get into a whole lot of speculation," he said, repeating that he wanted to "sit down and have this conversation."
He dodged a reporter's question at the end of the press conference on allowing a vote on a "clean" continuing resolution -- a bill to fund the government with no strings attached -- in order to end the shutdown. Boehner said on Sunday that the House of Representatives did not have the votes to pass such a measure, but vote tallies by The Huffington Post and other outlets show that the bill would likely pass.
"Doo, doo, doo," he hummed, walking out.
Before You Go
