Unlike the Washington Post, Politico is reporting that despite the Boehner-Obama meeting last night and the subsequent communication from their staffs, there is little progress being made and both sides are dug in:
Although they met Sunday for the first time in more than three weeks — signaling a new, potentially more productive stage of the negotiations — there was no progress on the staff level ahead of that sit-down, according to Democratic and Republican sources.
...
Boehner was asked directly about supporting a 37 percent top rate and didn’t say no. But his office later put out a clarifying statement: “As I’ve said many, many, many times: I oppose tax rate increases because tax rate increases cost American jobs. That has not changed and will not change.”
The speaker wants Obama to make a serious offer on entitlement reform, something beyond the proposed cuts to Medicare providers that Geithner offered two weeks ago. But that hasn’t happened.
All of this adds up to gridlock — with massive real-world implications.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
So it seems like there are inconsistencies in the reporting, because as of today, there are multiple reports of an impasse and multiple reports of some "deal" emerging. If I had to square that circle, I think people are projecting what a final deal would look like, while the parties involved have still not reached that point(i.e. Boehner conceding on rates, and Obama on Medicare). That's the only way for all these reports to be true.