Speaker Boehner to Brody File: Preparing For 'one giant fight over the future for our country'

Speaker John Boehner tells The Brody File that when it comes to issue over the budget and raising the debt ceiling he is preparing for “one giant fight over the future for our country.”

Speaker Boehner made the comments to me Sunday night in Nashville. Watch his comments about the situation in Wisconsin below and read the full transcription.

Speaker John Boehner: It’s not just Wisconsin. It’s Ohio. It’s Indiana. You’re going to see these types of actions taken in a lot of states because the states are broke. and over the last couple of years the Obama administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress bailed out the states where they could avoid making the tough decisions.

Well, there are no more bailouts coming from Washington. We’re broke. We’re broke! We don’t have money to dish out to the states so all these governors are trying to find ways to balance their budgets, which they’re required to do. In some of these states you’ve got collective bargaining laws that are so weighted in favor of the public employees that there’s almost no bargaining.

We’ve given them a machine gun and put it right at the heads of the local officials and they really have their hands tied. And I think what you're seeing in these states is they’re trying to bring some balance to these negotiations that when you look at the pay of public employees today and you look at their retirement benefits, they are way out of line with many other working Americans.

So all of these governors are going to have big challenges and it’s not just going to be the governors. You’re going to see every political jurisdiction in America grapple with what do we need to do as opposed to what do we want to do. All of them are going to go through a very difficult period.

David Brody: And the outcome here means quite a bit to the future of this country because this is a proxy fight on a lot of different levels.

Speaker Boehner: Yes and when the President engaged in this, what he’s trying to do is make what’s going on in Washington and what’s going on in the states all part of one big fight, gambling that Americans really don’t want to cut spending.

I think he should not have gotten involved in this. But I understand that this is not just about the Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded through September 30. We’ve got a big budget for the next fiscal year that starts October 1 that we’ve got to debate and come to some agreement on. And then the President has asked us to increase the debt limit, which all of this is going to end up being one giant fight over the future for our country.

Brody: But you’re going to get something. If you guys are going to raise the debt limit, you’re going to get something in return for it.

Speaker Boehner: We sure are.