Mr. "I got 98% of what I wanted" Boehner (updated)

Let's take a trip into the way back past with our time machine...all the way back to August 2011. I know that was such a long time ago that our memories fade. But we have this thing called the internet where we can almost magically refresh our memories.

The Republicans had created a hostage situation where - for the first time in the country's history - they were threatening the full faith and credit of the United States if they didn't get the spending cuts they wanted. On the brink of a global financial collapse, a deal was finally struck - including the sequester which is about to go into effect in a week and a half. Here's what Speaker Boehner had to say about that deal.

"When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy," Boehner said in an interview with CBS News on Monday evening.

Either Mr. Boehner is losing his mind or he is a congenital liar. Because yesterday, here's what he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

So, as the president's outrage about the sequester grows in coming days, Republicans have a simple response: Mr. President, we agree that your sequester is bad policy.

And if that wasn't whiplash-inducing enough, he also said this:

The sequester is a wave of deep spending cuts scheduled to hit on March 1. Unless Congress acts, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will occur this year, with another $1.1 trillion coming over the next decade. There is nothing wrong with cutting spending that much—we should be cutting even more—but the sequester is an ugly and dangerous way to do it.

You see that? The sequester isn't cutting enough...that's what the Republican Speaker of the House is saying. Think about that one for a moment.

As Mr. Boehner goes on to say, the problem with the sequester is that it cuts Defense spending instead of "America's safety net and retirement-security programs."

There's your Republican Party today folks. Is it any wonder that sane people think they've gone batshit insane? 

UPDATE: If you'd like a point-by-point takedown of what Mr. Boehner said yesterday, Steve Benen is your guy.