Mr. Tan to O-man:'We're closer than we think...'

'They elected us to lead'

How could we ever forget the debt ceiling talks of 2011?

Washington, D.C. - House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reached out to his arch nemesis the day after the election, and said it's time to put away the credit card.

“They elected us to lead,” he said in a televised Capitol Hill conference. “We'e closer than we think to the critical mass needed legislatively to get tax reform done.”

Then, he did a curious thing.

He recalled how at one point in the one-on-one debt ceiling talks he held with the President in the summer of 2011, Mr. Obama endorsed a top tax rate lower than 35 percent.

Like Governor Romney, he offered no specifics, and he took no questions, but he indicated a willingness to work with the President to take a “balanced approach” to limit an upward spiral of benefits and enact a battery of spending cuts.

In a few months, he cautioned, the nation will reach a “fiscal cliff” on the brink of which spending cuts and tax increases mandated by law loom as big as Dallas.

Back to the rant and cant of the campaign trail, he reminded the President that the nation's massive debt is “smothering growth and exceeding the entire size of our economy.”

But, then, he was on to greener pastures and a more reasonable approach to talking to the newly triumphant honcho at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before the nation's keeper of the coin are asked to raise the debt ceiling and print some more money to keep the government running, he suggested – big difference from demanding – four modest proposals that he believes will turn the trick in a gridlocked House of Representatives hell bent on continuing the Tea Party.

To let economic growth bring the nation to the brink of the cliff with a more reasonable credit posture, lower tax rates, limit the number and size of tax loopholes, and simplify the tax code.

What a difference a day makes – especially in Uh-High-Yuh, where unemployment is topping the charts, and the people's choice swung with the O-man. The key difference is in the tone of voice. Yeah.