Obama Dares Boehner to Cut up the Credit Cards

The debt limit impasse in Washington seems to have taken a turn today with President Obama announcing:

"The issue here is whether or not America pays its bills. We are not a deadbeat nation. And so there's a very simple solution to this. Congress authorizes us to pay our bills."

This is starting to sound like two spouses fighting over who can charge what on the family credit card. But who is the husband and who is the wife? Surely the President is the husband and Speaker Boehner is the wife.

What President Obama says he wants:

"making sure that we are reducing our health care spending, which is the main driver of our deficits"

What President Obama says he doesn't want:

"What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people; the threat that unless we get our way, unless you gut Medicare or Medicaid or, you know, otherwise slash things that the American people don't believe should be slashed, that we're going to threaten to wreck the entire economy. That is not how historically this has been done. That's not how we’re going to do it this time."

Now, excuse me for being confused but the health care spending that President Obama wants to cut is the same Medicare and Medicaid that he doesn't want Boehner to gut. That sounds like wife logic to me. And, as everyone knows, the wife always wins and the husband always loses. And if the husband does win, he loses later.

It's enough to make John Boehner cry, which come to think of it is the one way Boehner can win, by out-wifing the President of the United States. Didn't Boehner just take a political beating from Obama on taxes? Well, husband, you can't win and not expect to lose later.

Now don't blame me for comparing Obama and Boehner to a couple of bickering spouses. I got that image from the President himself (and this reads like husband logic to me):

You don’t go out to dinner and then, you know, eat all you want and then leave without paying the check. And if you do, you’re breaking the law. And Congress is -- should think about it the same way that the American people do. You don’t -- now if -- if Congress wants to have a debate about maybe we shouldn't go out to dinner next time, maybe we should go to a more modest restaurant, that's fine. That -- that's a debate that we should have. But you don't -- you don't say, in order for me to control my appetites, I'm going to not pay the people who are provided me services, people who already lent me the money. That -- that's not -- that's not showing any discipline. All that's doing is not meeting your obligations. You can't do that.

By the way, we are, objectively, a deadbeat nation and wrecking the entire economy is, historically, how we handle fiscal problems. If the $16.5 trillion in national debt is as unsustainable as it feels, the only way out is to stiff the creditors after running the country into bankruptcy. If that's the plan, we better get on with it.