From Tuesday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On the White House’s continued push for a “big deal” including revenues:
I think what Jay [Carney] is saying is they’re calculating that the Boehner approach will not succeed. The Reid plan will probably not get out of the Senate. Even if it does, it dies in the House. So by the end of the week, there’s nothing on the table in the Congress. …
[Boehner] said, ‘My offer to the president remains on the table. I haven’t withdrawn it.’
He wasn’t offering to go back into negotiations — twice bitten, he was not going to go for a third try — but [his offer] is still on the table.
And Carney said [in the Bret Baier interview]: The president’s offers are still on the table — and that extra amount of taxes that he tried to squeeze out of the speaker, which precipitated Boehner’s walking out, well, that can be negotiated away. …
So what he [Carney] is saying is, ‘We’re going to withdraw it [the extra tax hike demand] if he [Boehner] will come back.’
Now, that would be a hell of a chance [to take] on the part of Boehner. But the president I think is calculating [that] everything dies in the House and the Senate, it ends up in the White House again, and we strike a grand deal. I think it’s delusional, but that appears to be what they’re saying. …
[Delusional because] if he [Boehner] can’t sell the Boehner plan, he’s not going to sell the Obama plan.
On the president’s opposition to the Boehner plan because it’s too short:
I heard it [the president’s Monday night speech], I heard the president, as a lot of Democrats like to do, heaping praise on Reagan, saying how reasonable he was about the debt ceiling, quoting Reagan and saying that he increased the debt ceiling 18 times in his presidency.
Well, if you do the math, that means that the average length of increase of the debt limit was less than six months!
Three minutes later, Obama is denouncing the Republicans and the Boehner proposal because it’s six months, which is unconscionable, irresponsible, and reckless. In fact, his argument [is] that he will veto the Boehner bill because… it’s so short.
I’m surprised that nobody in the White House is able, actually, to divide eight by 18.