According to GOP lawmakers and aides, it involves adding a package of conservative policy provisions to the continuing resolution the Senate approves. The two likeliest provisions are measures that repeal the medical device tax (which enjoys some bipartisan support and would represent a substantive blow to the law itself) and ban subsidies under the health law for federal lawmakers and their staff members (which lawmakers think would earn media attention but amount to little more than a symbolic political victory.)

While a small group of conservatives wants to send back to the Senate a new CR that delays Obamacare for a year, lawmakers know there’s no time for that if they want to avoid a shutdown. Notably, there seems to be no discussion of re-inserting the original language to defund Obamacare and sending back to the Senate the same CR it will have just rejected – an approach some House Republicans were agitating for as recently as last week.

The second step in Boehner’s plan involves the debt-ceiling – specifically, Republicans demanding a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare in exchange for extending the nation’s borrowing limit before the Treasury Department runs out of money to pay the country’s bills on Oct. 17.

Several influential conservatives, led by Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, have been encouraging their House colleagues to approach the CR and debt-ceiling episodes as two fronts in the same war against Obamacare. This would afford House Republicans some flexibility to say they are attacking Obamacare from several different angles, they argue, while also helping to save face after the Senate disposes of their proposal to defund the health care law.