Educating Boehner

This WSJ piece by Stephen Moore is very insightful into President Obama's lack of seriousness in tackling the debt problem (which is really a spending problem) in this country.  In it, Moore interviews Speaker John Boehner and some truly appaling details emerge from the so-called "fiscal cliff" back room dealings:

What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: "At one point several weeks ago," Mr. Boehner says, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' "

And:

The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." 

Obama, the "great compromiser":

Mr. Boehner confirms that at one critical juncture he asked Mr. Obama, after conceding on $800 billion in new taxes, "What am I getting?" and the president replied: "You don't get anything for it. I'm taking that anyway."

Boehner's tone throughout the piece is somewhat naive, e.g., this section:

...Mr. Boehner says he won't engage in any more closed-door budget negotiations with the White House, which are "futile." He adds: "Sure, I will meet with the president if he wants to," but House Republicans will from now on proceed with establishing a budget for the year following what is known as "regular order," and they will insist that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats pass a budget—something they haven't done in nearly four years—before proceeding.

I'm glad he finally figured this out (this is after all a Republic, right?).

This piece shows me that Boehner needs to understand Obama more as Obama understands himself.  He really needs to read Charles Kesler's I Am the Change:  Barack Obama and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism before the next time he negotiates with President Obama.