Disarray among House Republicans surfaced Tuesday as the Senate closed in on an agreement to reopen the government and avoid a possible U.S. default as soon as this week.

House Speaker John Boehner was “struggling” to come up with enough votes to pass a GOP counter-proposal to the Senate plan, a House Republican leadership aide and other sources told CNN’s Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh.

After a two-hour meeting with his caucus that lasted twice as long as scheduled, Boehner told reporters there was no final decision on what the GOP-led House would do.

Source: CNN – CNN: House GOP disarray surfaces over possible shutdown plan

House GOP leaders are struggling to settle on a plan to open the federal government and raise the country’s debt ceiling that would placate the most conservative members of their rank and file, while Senate leaders grow increasingly concerned that the House’s latest actions could stymie a bipartisan agreement they are close to brokering to end the standoff.

Republicans in the House aim to build off the work of Senate leaders, but adding new sweeteners to their own plan that could help more conservative members get on board with a compromise.

The House plan would likely include more changes to President Obama’s health care law, including a delay in a tax on medical devices and a provision that would force members of Congress, their staff and cabinet members to get their health insurance from exchanges.

But even before the details of the plan emerged, the White House signaled that President Obama would reject it.

Source: ABC News – ABC News: Splintered House GOP Undermines Senate Progress on Shutdown, Debt Ceiling

The government shutdown began with Democrats saying Republican demands about Obamacare were ‘extortion.’ Now, as the GOP resistance collapses, Senate Democrats are pushing back.

For the past few weeks, Democrats from the president on down decried Republican tactics on a potential government shutdown as political hostage-taking on a par with “extortion.” So, of course, now that the Republicans are on the run, the Democrats are doing the exact same thing in reverse.

They’re saying they want to undo major part of the sequester budget cuts as part of a deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit. It’s as though Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada has finally sensed his moment to destroy that product of tea party Republicanism once and for all. One might not even be surprised if “Ride of the Valkyries” was booming from his Senate office this morning.

That is how dramatically the story in Washington has flipped during the two weeks since the government shutdown.

Source: Yahoo! News – Yahoo! News: Government shutdown backfires? GOP says Democrats now guilty of extortion