Paul Ryan showed his true colors today by threatening the economy, and confirming that Republicans will demanding ransom in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

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WALLACE: You say, and quite rightly so, and I think it’s a big accomplish, you removed the threat of government shutdowns for almost the next two years.

On the other hand, we’ve got a debt limit crisis —

RYAN: That’s right.

WALLACE: — which is going to come up in the next couple of months, February and March, people are saying.

Should Republicans risk a default crisis?

As you know, the president will say, well, you’re going to send the country into a default by demanding more progress on spending and the deficit or do you just cave there and say, hey, look, we’re going to just kick this can down the road and focus on ObamaCare?

RYAN: Look, one — one step at a time, Chris. We — Patty and I knew that we weren’t going to solve —

WALLACE: Patty Murray, your —

RYAN: Yes, Patty Murray. I’m sorry.

WALLACE: Yes.

RYAN: Patty Murray and I knew we weren’t going to solve every problem like the debt limit problem. So we sought to find common ground to solve this problem, this problem being a shutdown possibly in January and then another shutdown possibly in October.

And we got our principles established here.

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: We’ve got cut the deficit —

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Sir, I understand, but the question is, are you going to demand more in return for raising the deficit?

RYAN: We as a caucus, along with our Senate counterparts, are going to meet and discuss what it is we want to get out of the debt limit. We don’t want nothing out of this debt limit. We’re going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight.

One of the problems or concerns I have with the debt limit is we don’t know when it’s going to hit.

Jack Lew, the treasury secretary, has ultimately discretion on when this could occur. So, the timing of this is very much in doubt.

So we’re going to meet in our retreats after the — after the holidays and discuss exactly what it is we’re going to try and get for this.