It clearly isn't. While I'm sure many of you would probably express skepticism, I do believe if it were up to Boehner he would have cut a deal by now. Lord knows the Democrats have been plenty generous.
But the political battle isn't really between Obama and the Senate Democrats versus Republicans in the House of Representatives. Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight explained it accurately this morning:
If the House was able to approve any kind of increase to the debt limit, it would transfer focus to the White House and to the Senate. Mr. Obama has threatened to veto a short-term increase, but he would have little time left before the Treasury’s Aug. 2 deadline and perhaps little leverage. The Democratic-led Senate would probably be the bigger barrier: it could move to vote on its own proposal, leading to a potential standoff between the two chambers. Still, Mr. Boehner could put Democrats on the defensive, if not necessarily into checkmate.
Mr. Boehner, however, has a math problem. Republicans have 240 members in the House, and 217 votes are currently required to pass a bill. That means they could lose at most 23 votes, or about 10 percent of their caucus, assuming they picked up no Democratic support.
Mr. Boehner had previously indicated, however, that at least 59 Republicans would not vote to raise the debt limit under any circumstances, a number that appears to coincide with the 60 Republicans who are members of the Tea Party Caucus.
It is telling, perhaps, that the “cut, cap and balance” bill, although winning the support of all but 11 Republicans, did not raise the debt ceiling. Instead, it erected another barrier to it, requiring that a balanced budget amendment be approved by two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress before additional borrowing authority was given to the Treasury.
That sums it up perfectly- if this were really about reaching an agreement with Democrats, Boehner could put immense pressure on the Dems simply by passing a highly favorable (for Republicans) bill in the House that actually did raise the debt ceiling, and challenge Democrats to reject it and be the ones left holding the bag for the default blame.
But with 60 or so House Republicans on record as being opposed to an increase in the debt ceiling under any circumstances, Boehner is unable to shift the burden onto the Democrats. He may prove me wrong in the next few days and actually pass his new proposal. But I doubt it.
More likely, at the last possible instant, reasonable people on the Republican side (I know there aren't many but there are some) will forge some sort of compromise with moderate Democrats that leaves the most liberal Dems and the tea party Republicans voting against it. This will be haled as a bipartisan compromise but in reality will be heavily tilted toward Republicans.
The only realistic alternative to that is either default or some unilateral action by Obama, because I do not think you will see 217 Republicans voting for ANYTHING in the House that raises the debt ceiling. They would rather watch it all burn.