None of this matters.
Only One Thing Matters. Is anyone willing to force the US into default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling? If the answer is no, Boehner has no leverage, and that would not be his fault. If no one else is willing to, they would have no leverage either.
Before you jump up and say not raising the ceiling is not default, here are the numbers.
With the tax increase, revenue should be about 2.5 Trill this year. Spending is 3.6 Tril. Breaking it down we get DoD and Soc Sec at 1.45 Tril in sum. Interest is 0.227 Trill so 1.7ish Tril in sum. Medicare and Medicaid 0.84 Tril to sum to 2.5 Tril. That’s it. That eats all the revenue. If the ceiling doesn’t rise, there’s nothing for anything else. And with that kind of a chop of things (can you really allow airliners to fly with no FAA to do traffic management at airports?) economic activity will be reduced, reducing tax revs.
Let’s look further. Chop off Medicaid and keep the docs who treat elderly (Medicare) and that is about 0.7 Tril and the point is this leaves about 0.1 Trill (100 Billion) to fund EVERYTHING ELSE from the FAA to FDA to interstate highway repair to national parks to forest fire fighting and a lot of things most conservatives accept.
So . . . if you’re not willing to push the negotiations into default, what leverage is there for 1 March?