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Somehow, I don't think this is going to work out the way Boehner wants it to work out:

John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that giving the president control of the debt ceiling is "silliness."

"Congress is never going to give up this power," the House Speaker told Fox News Sunday. "I've made it clear to the president, that every time we get to the debt limit, we need to cut some reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit. It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone."

The White House's proposed fiscal cliff deal includes a provision to hand over debt ceiling powers to the executive branch. As it stands, only Congress can approve raising the debt limit. Last year, negotiations over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling led to a months-long standoff between Democrats and Republicans. In one incident, Boehner reportedly walked out of a meeting at the White House.

The White House on Thursday proposed a deal to address the fiscal cliff, a series of spending cuts and tax hikes set to go into effect at the end of this year. Besides the debt ceiling powers, the proposal includes $1.6 trillion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next decade.

Republicans have settled on a strategy for extending the Bush tax cuts that seems counterintuitive and destructive to the economy: Revive the debt ceiling battle. John Boehner tossed the first salvo this week when he held a press conference to declare that there would be no further increases in the debt ceiling without one-for-one spending cuts. This is his declaration after he also declared that the triggers in the last "deal" weren't ones he was willing to abide by. In other words, he will renege on the deal made last summer in order to try and kill Social Security and Medicare.

Mitch McConnell played that card in his interview with Bob Schieffer this morning where he dropped a few bombs into the dialogue. He begins with his usual snide comments about how President Obama "needs to act like an adult", which is nothing other than code for calling the President to heel to Republicans' demands. And what are those demands?

McConnell told host Bob Schieffer that the president has had three-and-a-half years to tackle the deficit, but "we could not get this president to do anything serious about entitlement reform, for example, the single biggest threat to future generations."

This is, of course, untrue, but McConnell doesn't stop with that generalization. No, he elaborates, saying that US national debt exceeds the US economy, which "makes us like Greece." Not so much, Senator McConnell.

Here are some questions Bob Schieffer should have asked and didn't:

1. Why are Republicans intent on cutting Medicare and Social Security when the bulk of our national debt is the result of Bush tax cuts?
2. Why are Republicans ignoring the FACT that federal spending and the deficit are lower today than they were at the end of the Bush administration?
3. Why is Republicans' word worthless? They agreed to the "deal" made at the last debt ceiling raise, and they're reneging. Who's the adult again?

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If nothing else, the debt ceiling crisis provided what Barack Obama is so fond of calling a "teachable moment." Hopefully, that extends to the President himself. After seeing his nominees blocked, his legislation filibustered and popular upper-income tax increases delayed by Republicans who withheld their support from his watered down stimulus and health care programs, President Obama nevertheless continued to seek common ground with those whose only goal remains his political destruction. The result was as painful as it was predictable.

As for the rest of us, here are 25 things we learned during the debt crisis.

(1) We learned that Republicans really care about the national debt, but only when a Democrat is in the White House. As Dick Cheney put it, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

(2) We learned that the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, forcing him to raise the debt ceiling 17 times. Overwhelmed by the torrents of red ink unleashed by his supply-side tax cuts of 1981, Reagan raised taxes eleven times while in office. (His deficit reduction initiatives of 1982, 1984 and 1987 relied on over 75% in new tax revenue.) It's no wonder Reagan called the mountain of debt he bequeathed to America his greatest regret.

(3) We learned that George W. Bush nearly doubled the national debt, leaving Barack Obama a $1.2 trillion annual deficit and almost $11 trillion in debt on January 20, 2009.

(4) We learned that the Bush tax cuts were the single biggest factor in erasing the projected surpluses Dubya inherited from Bill Clinton. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 accounted for almost half of the red ink during his tenure, and if made permanent, would contribute more to the debt over the next decade than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, the stimulus and TARP combined.

(5) We learned that tax cuts don't "pay for themselves" or "always increase revenues." Only in 2005 did federal tax revenue reach the pre-Bush tax cut levels of 2000.

(6) We learned that the Republicans' so-called job creators don't create jobs when their taxes are low. In fact, the data show that the far more jobs were created and the economy grew much more quickly when the top 1% of income earners paid higher - even much higher - taxes.

(7) We learned that for John Boehner, some "spending binges" are more equal than others. While spending under Barack Obama rose by about 10% from George W. Bush's last budget in FY 2009, federal outlays almost doubled between 2001 and 2009. As it turns out, the two unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 (the first war-time tax cut in modern U.S. history) and the Medicare prescription drug program drained the U.S. Treasury. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor voted for all of it.

(8) We learned that Republicans have short memories. When Eric Cantor complained recently that "what I don't think the White House understands is how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they're going to vote for a debt ceiling increase," he apparently forgot that Republican majorities voted seven times to raise the debt limit under President Bush. Along with John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl, Cantor and the current GOP leadership team voted a combined 19 times to increase George W. Bush's borrowing authority by $4 trillion. (That vote tally included a "clean" debt ceiling increase in 2004, backed by 98 current House Republicans and 31 sitting GOP Senators.)

(9) We learned that Republicans are bad at genetics, too. Last Friday, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling claimed that for Republicans, raising the debt ceiling is "contrary to our DNA."

(10) We learned that in rare moments of candor, Republicans can speak the truth. In January, Speaker Boehner acknowledged that failure to raise the debt ceiling would cause "financial disaster." And Utah Senator Orrin Hatch explained that when President Bush was in the White House, for Republicans "it was standard practice not to pay for things."

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"In Washington more spending and more debt is business as usual," House Speaker John Boehner declared on Monday before warning, "I've got news for Washington - those days are over." The days, Boehner should have explained, before Barack Obama took the oath of office. As Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) rightly pointed on the Senate floor last year, "We would have none of this if it hadn't been for the Republican debt orgy that they went through." Which is exactly right. As a few handy charts show, Republican presidents and the current GOP leadership in Congress presided over that debt debauchery. And now they demand Democrats clean up their mess.

In case Americans had forgotten that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it, the New York Times presented the helpful reminder above.

For their part, Republicans want to pretend history began on January 20, 2009. While Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling claimed Friday that for Republicans raising the debt ceiling is "contrary to our DNA," House Minority Leader Eric Cantor protested two weeks ago, "I don't think the White House understands is how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they're going to vote for a debt ceiling increase."

As McClatchy showed, Republicans are as bad at genetics and history as they are at economics:

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If it appears that John Boehner is suffering from multiple personality disorder over the debt ceiling stand-off, that's because he is. Torn between his duty to the national interest as Speaker of the House and to the Tea Party caucus that put him there, for months Boehner has ping-ponged between truth and lies on the debt ceiling. Long before he breached faith with the President on Friday, John Boehner tried to have it both ways on virtually every aspect of the debt ceiling crisis manufactured by the Republican Party he struggles to lead.

As Jed Lewison documented, Speaker Sybil couldn't get his story straight on Friday's walkout. While he insisted during his press conference afterward that "we had an agreement on a revenue number," in a letter that same day to House Republicans Boehner insisted that "A deal was never reached, and was never really close."

As it turns out, John Boehner's duplicity started long before he picked up the Speaker's gavel.

In the wake of the Republicans' overwhelming triumph at the polls last fall, Speaker-to-be Boehner was his party's voice of reason on the debt ceiling. As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 18 ("Boehner Warns GOP on Debt Ceiling"), Boehner pressed his newly enlarged Republican caucus on the need to raise the debt ceiling and so protect the full faith and credit of the United States.

"I've made it pretty clear to them that as we get into next year, it's pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with this," Mr. Boehner, who is slated to become House speaker in January, told reporters.

"We're going to have to deal with it as adults," he said, in what apparently are his most explicit comments to date. "Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part."

If an increase in the current debt limit of $14.3 trillion does not pass, it would suggest the country may not meet its obligations and would shake the financial system. It could rock the bond market, rattle the dollar and scare away foreign buyers of U.S. debt.

In January, Boehner echoed Paul Ryan's warning that "you can't not raise the debt ceiling" and Lindsey Graham's dire prediction that failure to do so would produce "collapse and calamity throughout the world." As Speaker Boehner put it then:

"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."

But that same month, Boehner was also insisting President Obama would have to make concessions to Republicans on the debt ceiling that George W. Bush, needless to say, never faced:

The American people will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the President and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington.

After bringing the government to the brink of a shutdown over budget cuts demanded by the GOP in April, a newly confident Speaker Boehner made abundantly clear he would join the hardliners in the House and Senate holding the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling hostage. As Politico reported, Boehner set out to prove "there's no daylight between the Tea Party and me":

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), fresh off the budget talks, told donors this weekend that if Obama wants an up or down vote on the debt ceiling he's not going to get it.

"The president says I want you to send me a clean bill," Boehner said. "Well guess what, Mr. President, not a chance you're going to get a clean bill."

"There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it," he continued in a clip of his remarks at a fundraiser that was played during "Face the Nation."

That really, really big "something" turned out to be the draconian Paul Ryan budget. After refusing to endorse the Ryan Roadmap during the 2010 campaign, John Boehner joined 234 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators in voting for the Ryan plan. But Ryan's blueprint didn't merely privatize Medicare, slash Medicaid and deliver yet another tax cut windfall for the wealthy; it would also add another $6 trillion in debt over the next decade. As a result, the GOP's own Ryan budget not only violates the "Cut, Cap and Balance Act" spending targets they just voted for this week. It would also require the Republicans to raise the ceiling repeatedly in the future.

In a rare moment of candor, Speaker John Boehner admitted as much.

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Much pearl-clutching after the statement on This Week by Paul Krugman that the U.S. should allow the government to default on the debt limit rather than allow Republicans to hold New Deal social programs hostage. Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman is quick to say he "respects" Krugman but disagrees. I'll just bet you do, Roger!

And a "terrified" FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair responds by urgently listing the potential effect on the bond market and institutional investors, of course completely missing the point: Would it be the Democrats' fault -- or that of the Republicans who are trying to impose their extremist and anti-democratic beliefs on the majority?

"I'm terrified by a blackmail political system," Krugman responds.

He's exactly right. It's like paying protection to your local thugs to keep your windows from being broken. It's not your fault for not paying, it's their fault for threatening you.

Oh, and here's Digby's take on the whole mishegas.