Apparently the whole "we support handing out bags full of money to the rich because we care about the little guy" act is harder to keep up than we'd realized. Put John Boehner under a little pressure about oil company subsidies and he buckles like a belt. ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl got the speaker to admit that oil companies "ought to be paying their fair share," that "big oil companies don't need to have the oil depletion allowances" (roughly a $1 billion annual subsidy) and that "we should be looking at" Obama's proposals to cut oil company tax breaks. Good god, man, you sound like some kind of Communist.
Feeling cognitive dissonance about this? Don't worry, none of it actually happened, according to Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. "The speaker made clear in the interview that raising taxes was a nonstarter, and he's told the president that. He simply wasn't going to take the bait and fall into the trap of defending 'Big Oil' companies," said Steel. Now we're back on familiar "not intended to be a factual statement"/"that's historical fiction" ground. (Note that defending big oil companies is a "trap" when a journalist asks about it, but NOT a trap when Boehner actually votes to protect subsidies for Big Oil.)
