The White House has said repeatedly that the president will not enter budget negotiations until Congress reopens the government. Those negotiations now appear to be happening.

The question is, if a deal emerges, will it require Republicans to pass the stopgap spending bill the Senate passed on 27 September with no add-ons pertaining to Obamacare or anything else – “clean,” as they say?

And what will the Republicans require in return for doing so? “We need to get something for the [continuing resolution] and something for the debt ceiling,” Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho has explained.

One of the leaders of the negotiations on the Republican side is Paul Ryan, the former vice presidential candidate and reputed budget wonk. “Suddenly a man who seemed in danger of being eclipsed as the face of his party has re-emerged as essential to its rescue,” New York Times congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman writes. So what does Ryan want?

Ryan laid out areas for negotiation in a Wall Street Journal editorial Tuesday. They are Medicare (means-testing for relatively affluent recipients); federal pensions (cutting them) and taxes. He also alluded to the Keystone pipeline which would connect Canada “tar sands” oil deposits to the Gulf coast with dire environmental implications.

Ryan did not mention Obamacare, significantly, meaning a plan he brokers could encounter resistance from the hard-right House faction for whom destroying the law is a top priority. The health care law is partially paid for by a tax on medical devices. The deletion of the tax as part of a deal would allow the Tea Party to claim it had dealt the law a blow.

Democrats have been insisting all week that even a “clean” stopgap spending bill is not great for Democrats because it extrapolates from base spending levels that take into account the “meat-cleaver” sequester cuts. When sequestration becomes part of the new normal, there’s an argument to be made that the Republicans have won, no matter how bad their numbers are.

The chairman of the House appropriations committee said Republicans will test the president on his vow only to cut a budget deal on the condition that government reopens, Bloomberg Business week reports (via @robertcostaNRO):

Obama “would like the shutdown stopped,” Representative Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, said after the White House session. “We are trying to find out what it is he would insist upon” in a spending measure to open the government.

What will they get?