Speaker John A. Boehner stood his ground on Sunday alongside the most conservative Republicans in Congress, insisting that the House would not vote to finance and reopen the government or raise the nation’s borrowing limit without concessions from President Obama on the health care law. “The fact is, this fight was going to come one way or the other,” Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week,” adding, “We’re in the fight.” With his hard line, Mr. Boehner reaffirmed that the stalemate with the White House over the six-day-old government shutdown was now compounded by an even more economically risky fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit by Oct. 17 to pay for bills already incurred.

GAO estimated that delays in raising the debt limit in 2011 led to an increase in Treasury’s borrowing costs of about $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2011. However, this does not account for the multiyear effects on increased costs for Treasury securities that will remain outstanding after fiscal year 2011. Further, according to Treasury officials, the increased focus on debt limit-related operations as such delays occurred required more time and Treasury resources and diverted Treasury’s staff away from other important cash and debt management responsibilities.

A default would upend money markets, destroy bond funds, slam the brakes on lending, cause interest rates to spiral, make our banks insolvent, and deal a blow to our foreign trading partners and creditors around the globe; all of which would throw the U.S. and the world into economic disarray.

“It would be extremely dangerous and likely recovery-ending event,” Bernanke later added. “For a very long time afterwards, the U.S. would have to pay higher interest rates in the market and that would make our deficit problems even more intractable,” he said.

Boehner is ready to tear this country down unless he gets his way. Like a petulant child. A deranged petulant child. This is on him. Completely. And let's be clear about what is at stake. The Government Accountability Office calculated the cost from 2011, when an increase in the debt limit was simply delayed.Imagine if some foreign power, or terrorist organization, was making threats that could cost the U.S Treasury $1.3 billion. And that's just the cost of a delay. An actual default would be devastating Imagine if some foreign power, or terrorist organization, was threatening such economic devastation. In 2011, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke described the impact:Imagine if some foreign power, or terrorist organization, was threatening such economic devastation.

John Boehner owns these twin crises. He can end them just by allowing a vote. He doesn't need to vote to end these twin crises, he only needs to allow the elected congressional representatives of the American people to vote. But he refuses to allow the elected congressional representatives of the American people to vote. He lies about what will happens. He is committing political extortion. He is threatening economic terrorism.

President Obama and the Democrats must not give in to this political extortion. It would break our very system of elective governance and create the permanent chaos of extortion politics. The Democrats have no good answers. There are never good answers to any forms of extortion or terrorism. But that is where we are. John Boehner is dishonest, dangerous, and deranged. He must not be in any way accommodated or appeased. His brand of politics must be destroyed or else he will destroy this nation.