Speaker John Boehner says "no new jobs."

(Yuri Gripas/Reuters)



WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) — With a special deficit-reduction supercommittee floundering, the top Republican in Congress warned Thursday that he won't permit savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for President Barack Obama's jobs spending agenda. [...] "I've made it pretty clear that those savings that are coming to us as a result of the wind down of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan should be banked, should not be used to offset other spending," said House Speaker John Boehner. But the Ohio Republican did not address whether war savings could be used to extend expiring tax cuts such as popular business tax breaks or Obama's expensive proposal to renew payroll tax cuts that expire at the end of December.

Item number 3,785 in the Republicans-really-don't-care-about-the-deficit file is this from Speaker John Boehner rejecting yet another offer of concessions from Democrats in the Super Congress negotiations.

How do you fix the deficit? One easy way, as EJ Dionne reminds us again today, is by doing nothing and just letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

The other really good way is to create jobs. Get the economy going again, get people paying taxes. It just isn't that complicated. The real story is that Boehner and his Republican colleagues don't want a functioning economy.