John Boehner May Have To Murder Economy After All To Save The Economy

Never mind those hints of reasonableness last week; John Boehner is back on the Tough Talk Trail now, and said this weekend that unless President Obama makes some concessions to the GOP, maybe we'll just have to default on our debt after all. On ABC's This Week, the House Speaker told George Stephanopoulos that he really hates the idea of allowing a debt default, but he might have to strangle the world economy to teach the President a lesson:

BOEHNER: My goal here is not to have the United States default on its debt. My goal is to have a serious conversation about those things that are driving the deficit and the debt up and the president’s refusal to sit down and have a conversation about this is putting our nation.

STEPHANOPOULOS: He continues to refuse to negotiate, the country is going to default?

BOEHNER: That’s the path we’re on. The president canceled his trip to Asia. I assume -- he wants to have a conversation. I decided to stay here in Washington this weekend. He knows what my phone number is. All he has to do is call.

Why won't Barry call? Why must John Boehner sit up late at night, wondering if Barry still cares? Why won't he let the Republicans kill the Affordable Health Care Act just a little bit in exchange for not imploding the economy?

Yr Wonkette would like to apologize for that brief moment of irrational optimism last week when we thought Boehner might actually have committed to not allowing a default -- we'd like to think that ultimately, the Orange One will act responsibly. But first, we're going to have to hear a lot of this idiocy about driving the economy off a cliff for the sake of reducing the deficit -- which is actually going down already, not increasing. But you don't get to hold on to your job as Speaker if you confuse the tea party with facts.

Boehner also told Stephanopouplos that a "clean debt limit increase" was simply not an option, because... well, just because:

“I told the president, there’s no way we’re going to pass one… the votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit.”

And why is that? something something Obamacare freedom, and is the Speaker of the House actually saying that a majority of the House is in favor of defaulting on the debt? We think Florida congresscritter Dennis Ross was a lot closer to truthiness when he admitted late last week that the government shutdown was no longer about Obamacare:  "I think now it’s a lot about pride," he said.

So now we can look forward to another couple weeks of this stupid posing, with John Boehner insisting that giving working people access to health care would be far worse for the economy than a debt default would be, so he can keep his pride and his job, until he finally gets the golden phone call and Barry hands him just the right concession. Maybe something really close to the Speaker's heart, like dropping the tax on tanning beds.

[ ThinkProgress ]