“I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, alright?” Boehner said Thursday. “But this is nonsense.”

Republicans, and a bloc of Democrats, want to see the tax cuts extended for all income brackets and have vowed only to vote for a measure that contains all of them. Boehner did not rule out, however, a compromise that would include an extension of federal unemployment benefits, which expire this week.