And you thought this was a done deal, didn't you?

President Obama and House Republicans failed to reach agreement on a six-week extension of the nation’s borrowing authority during a meeting Thursday at the White House, but both sides agreed to keep talking and the Republican offer was seen as a first step toward ending the budget standoff.

Twenty Republicans, led by Speaker John A. Boehner, went to the White House at Mr. Obama’s invitation after a day of fine-tuning their offer to increase the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow money to pay existing obligations through Nov. 22. In exchange, they sought the president’s commitment to negotiate a deal for long-term deficit reduction and a tax overhaul.“The president didn’t say yes, didn’t say no,” said Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. “We’re continuing to negotiate this evening.”

It appears that President Obama wants an end to the government shutdown as part of an agreement.

Representative Hal Rogers, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that Mr. Obama was hoping to reopen the government before going forward to negotiations.

“I think it’s clear that he would like to have the shutdown stopped, and that would require a C.R.,” Mr. Rogers said, referring to a continuing resolution that would finance the government. “And we’re trying to find out what it is that he would insist upon in a C.R., and what we would insist upon. So our staffs are meeting, and we’ll talk later tonight.”

Fear not beltway villagers, the two parties are still talking so a deal might get done soon. The tea party freaks already have a victory because the Ryan budget levels are pretty much assured as the country moves forward which is a nightmare for America, but to them that's losing. The beltway media will now have more time to blame Obama and the Democrats for not negotiating with the Hostage takers and Suicide Caucus.

Click on the pic.twit to see how the White House felt about the meeting.

BREAKING WH readout of Obama-GOP meeting pic.twitter.com/4ouYxQtHhz

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) October 10, 2013

Digby has more:

Robert Costa is probably the best political reporter with sources inside the GOP. He just reported this out:

According to my sources, the House is poised to pass a six-week extension of the debt ceiling. One member of the leadership team says he’s “increasingly optimistic” that when the bill comes to the floor in the coming days, it’ll have significant Republican support. The ease of passage, he adds, can mostly be credited to Paul Ryan, the budget committee chairman, who has played a major, but low-key role in the GOP’s internal deliberations.

For weeks, instead of getting heavily involved in the shutdown talks, Ryan has worked on the edges, focusing on Ways and Means Committee meetings and floor huddles. During these sessions, he has urged his colleagues to support his push for broader fiscal talks, even if they were uncomfortable with tabling parts of their Obamacare agenda. Initially, it wasn’t an easy sell, but eventually many conservatives began to buy in. They didn’t like Ryan’s pitch, which asked them to lower certain expectations during divided government, but they slowly agreed with him that their dug-in position was unlikely to yield much.

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Costa also tweeted that the GOP thinks the White House said no because they don't think the GOP can muster the votes. Obviously, the Republicans think they can. And then they think the ball is in the Democrats' court to temporarily raise the debt ceiling --- or let the country go into default.

Isn't this fun?