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President Barack Obama today invited Republican and Democratic lawmakers to the White House to discuss the budget stand-off that shut the government and could plunge the United States into default.
Yet, in a sign of the distrust between Obama and his foes on Capitol Hill, Republican leaders decided to send only a delegation of top power players to the talks rather than a full party contingent.
The tit-for-tat battle over talks, and a row over the halting of death benefits for slain US soldiers, grabbed the limelight in the absence of any serious efforts by either side to break the logjam.
Obama will meet lawmakers from the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives later today, a White House official said.
Republicans in the House and both sides from the Senate will be invited in for talks "in the coming days," the official said.
The meetings come as Washington lurches close to an October 17 deadline to raise the US government's statutory borrowing limit.
Failure to do so could see the United States default on its obligations for the first time in its history and spark what the White House warns will be dire economic consequences which could spread around the globe.
The US government, meanwhile, has been shut for eight days, after Congress failed to agree on a budget to finance operations by an October 1 deadline.
Obama refuses to negotiate with Republicans on budget issues until the debt limit is lifted and the government is reopened.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner will not take either step until Obama offers concessions to his House Republican caucus.
A spokesman for Boehner said that the talks at the White House would only be worthwhile if a solution was on the agenda.
"That's why the House Republican Conference will instead be represented by a smaller group of negotiators, including the elected leadership and certain committee chairmen," said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck.
The talks with lawmakers are not meant as a sign Obama is climbing down on his refusal to enter serious negotiations before the immediate crisis has passed, aides said privately.
They may also be designed to defuse Republican charges that the president is obstinately opposed to dialogue with his foes, which have been adopted by Republicans in an attempt to spread the blame for the impact of the shutdown.
