John Boehner, Wednesday evening on Greta van Susteren's show:

We really have to focus in on that two-thirds of the budget that’s really driving the deficit and the debt to the levels that we see. I’ve said for months that it’s time to have an adult conversation with the American people about the big challenges that face us. When you look at Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, these are important programs for tens of millions of Americans. But they’re not sustainable at current levels. They’re not affordable for our kids and grandkids. We’re going to have to make some changes. But I think the first step is laying out the size of the problem, and here in the coming weeks, I expect you’ll see more and more from our team laying out just how big this problem is.

If Boehner really wanted to have an adult conversation, he'd acknowledge that Social Security is in solid shape, and that simply raising the payroll tax cap would secure it's solvency for the forseeable future. And Boehner would also admit that it was President Obama and the Democrats who took the first step towards reducing Medicare costs through the passage of health care reform. Yet instead of working with Democrats, Boehner and his gang attacked them for reducing the cost of Medicare. Even though those cost reductions will not reduce the quality of care, Boehner and the GOP claimed they had reduce benefits.

But now here he is, barely three months after the election, telling the public that the Republican Party thinks now is the time to cut not just Medicare, but also Medicaid and Social Security. Who knows, maybe he wants to return to being minority leader, because falsely claiming that we need to cut Social Security to balance the budget is exactly the kind of thing that should cost him the Speakership and Republicans the majority.