John Boehner's Real Message Last Night

Let's keep one thing in mind as we debate these votes on the debt ceiling: Congress is voting on whether to pay for stuff it's already passed during the George W. Bush administration - tax cuts for the rich, two wars, and a Medicare prescription plan. Republicans didn't pay for any of this in the Bush years when we were in control of the government, and we're sure as hell not going to pay for them now with a Democrat in the White House!

It was our good fortune that the economy tanked during the last year of President Bush's administration. The near collapse of the entire economy has played right into our hands. It matters not that Congress has voted on debt ceiling increases a hundred times over the years. What matters, in those stirring words of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, is not what we can do to help govern our country, but what we can do to defeat President Obama.

We handed President Obama a huge sack of economic doggie-doo back in 2009 and have fought tirelessly to undermine every attempt by the President and Democrats to bring our country out of the largest recession since the Great Depression. We have fought every attempt to rebuild our infrastructure, save the auto industry, reform the financial markets, care for our senior citizens, and sick children. We are working in every state across this once great and caring nation to weaken unions, degrade public education, and reduce environmental quality and insure that the protection of endangered species applies to venture capitalists and developers, not snails and frogs. We believe higher levels of particulate pollution is not a bad thing, a little mercury won't hurt, we've got enough swamps already, and a little lead is in the back yard soil won't hurt kids that much.

Exploitation of natural resources is what made our country great.

But back to the debt ceiling. We will not pay our bills unless the President agrees to our plans to take money away from senior citizens' social security and medicare, sick kids' medicaid, and the unemployed's insurance so we can give it to the rich. Medicare operates with administrative costs that are just a fraction of the private sector health industry; private health care plans like we envision would create ten times as many administrative jobs to do the same health care. Now, that's job creation. We have the highest medical costs of any country in the world with nowhere near the best outcomes. Our proposal to end Medicare will require us to spend more and more on ineffective administration of health care creating more and more bureaucratic low paying careers with ever more ineffective medical outcomes. What's not to like?

And this is just one example of our program. Our plans to privatize Social Security will result in untold billions of management fees for Wall Street fat cats unlike the current system which utilizes the safety and stability of the United States of America. Our plan to crash the economy of America and the world for political gain appears to be working. Why would we stop now?

Undermining the full faith and credit of the United States will be good for, well, I don't exactly remember who that will be good for, (I think I read that Eric Cantor's stock portfolio could benefit), but we cannot continue to afford to pay for tax breaks for oil companies, and corporate jets, and hedge fund managers, and the richest 400 families who own 60% of the nation's wealth. So something has to give.

And besides, the Tea Party doesn't listen to me anymore anyway.

So good night and good luck.



- Speaker of the House, John Boehner