About Boehner's speech

In his combative response to President Obama's speech last night, House Speaker John Boehner offered an uncommonly crystalized rendition of an all too common bit of GOP nonsense:

The solution to this crisis is not complicated: if you're spending more money than you're taking in, you need to spend less of it.

The rush transcript from the Wall Street Journal mistakenly ends this sentence with a comma, as if the transcriber were waiting for the phrase that follows logically: "...and/or take in more of it." It didn't come. Without that phrase, it's the usual bait and switch: if the budget deficit is a problem, smaller government is somehow the only solution. Add the phrase and the sentence is obviously correct, clear to any eight-year-old who's figured out how to get her lemonade stand in the black.