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I guess John Boehner believes that whoever yells the loudest wins, because he decided to throw another temper tantrum on the floor of the House this Friday -- John Boeher On ‘War On Women’: ‘Give Me A Break’:

House Speaker John Boehner channelled his inner John Stossell Friday on the House floor when he sounded off on Democratic rhetoric pointing to the House GOP’s legislative agenda and finding a “war on women.”

“And now, now we are going to have a fight over women’s health,” Boehner said. “Give me a break. This is the latest plank in the so-called war on women. Entirely created, entirely created by my colleagues across the aisle for political gain.”

Steve Benen has more on what Boehner and the Republicans could do if they're really concerned about their problem with women voters -- Boehner can make this subject go away:

House Republicans this week said they would agree to keep student loan interest rates at their current level, but only if they're allowed to gut spending on preventive health care to finance the costs. The White House balked, but the GOP didn't care -- today, the Republican bill passed, 215 to 195, largely along party lines.

Several Democratic lawmakers noted the impact the GOP health care cuts would have on women's health, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who's apparently grown a little sensitive to talk about the Republican "war on women," threw a bit of a tantrum on the House floor during the legislative debate.

I can appreciate why Boehner doesn't want to talk about the negative impact Republican policies are having on women, but I'd remind the Speaker that the quickest way to change the conversation is for Republicans to stop pursuing policies that have a negative impact on women.

In this case, rather than simply helping students because it would be good for them and the economy, Boehner's caucus decided to play a cheap little game -- they'll keep interest rates low only if they take funding from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which has nothing to do with student loans. [...]

Boehner can shout, point, and pound the podium to his heart's content, but if he doesn't want to be criticized for Republican measures that undermine women's health, he should change his party's agenda, not whine about Democrats shining a light on that agenda.

And as Steve noted, here's more from the White House on the real impact their demands would mean for women's health:

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Earlier in the day on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell allowed Sen. Roy Blunt to come on the air and tell this whopper:

‘Romney’s Man In Congress’ Falsely Blames Obamacare For High Student Loan Rates:

If Congress doesn’t act, the interest rates on government-backed student loan will jump in July, so President Obama has made a big push this week to prevent that from happening. Republicans have thus far held up the extension, though presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney called for preserving the lower rates Monday.

But Romney’s “man in Congress,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), seems to misunderstand the issue. In an interview on MSNBC this afternoon, Blunt blamed high student loan rates on the Affordable Care Act [...]

In fact, the rate was set back in 2007, when President Bush signed a Democratic-backed law to lower the rate from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. That law expires on July 1 of this year, and the lower rates end along with it. The Affordable Care Act and President Obama are entirely irrelevant.

Blunt is likely thinking of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), a bill that was attached to the Affordable Care Act. And while it did not affect loan rates, it did remove banker middlemen from the student loan process, which will save taxpayers millions of dollars.

Mitchell gave Blunt a complete pass when he made that statement during her show, and Ed Schultz was ready to call him out for lying before he even got on the air this evening on MSNBC. He played part of the interview on his radio show shortly after it aired and vowed to do more reporting on it during the evening, which is exactly what he did in the segment above. Rep. George Miller joined Ed to discuss Blunt's statement to Andrea Mitchell and how the Republicans are proposing to pay for the reduced interest rates now.

Here's more on that from Ed Kilgore -- House GOP Tries New Gambit on Student Loans:

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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell invited Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke to respond to Rush Limbaugh's latest attack on her, this time for daring send out a tweet on the fact that interest rates are going to to up on student loans if Congress fails to act shortly. Fluke was gracious as usual and discussed how ridiculous it was to accuse her of some kind of "coordinated" attack with the Obama administration.

As she noted, if she wants to know what the President is doing, she finds out like most of the rest of us and uses Google. Fluke pointed out that the changes were not doing to directly affect her, but they would greatly impact incoming students and fellow students she interacts with daily, who really cannot afford the rate hikes, which might make the cost of going to college prohibitive for those just on the edge of being able to afford it right now.

Here's more from the Huffington Post on Limbaugh's latest attack -- Rush Limbaugh Attacks Sandra Fluke Again (AUDIO) :

Rush Limbaugh went after Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke again on Tuesday for what he called "coordinating" with President Obama to "scare students about the interest rates on their loans."

During his Tuesday radio show, Limbaugh read a tweet Fluke sent, which said, "#DontDoubleMyRate. Many students will see the interest rate on Fed #StudentLoans increase if Congress doesn't act by 7/1."

Limbaugh called Fluke's tweet a coincidence since she allegedly sent it thirty minutes before Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that their federal student loans will double if Congress doesn't act by July 1.

Limbaugh laid into the law student, saying that "contraception isn't enough" and that "some people want their education paid for by other people too." He also seemingly mocked Fluke as the person his listeners all knew for "courageously and bravely fighting for contraception at Georgetown and wherever else it can be provided at no charge."

I guess we can add college students and their parents to the list of those the Republicans and Rush Limbaugh are determined to help alienate before the upcoming election. John Boehner's spin on the House Republicans refusing to keep the loan rates low -- it's all the Democrats' fault of course.

Steve Benen did a great job of breaking that down here -- The problem with Boehner's logic:

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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul told NBC's David Gregory Sunday that he would "eventually" end all federal aid to students.

"As you well know, you have a lot of support among young people," Gregory noted. "They're borrowing to pay for college at record levels. Would you abolish all federal student aid?"

"Eventually," Paul admitted. "But my program doesn't do it. There's a transition in this."

"But that's your ultimate aim?" Gregory wondered.

"Yes," Paul replied. "Because there's no authority to do this and just think of all this willingness to want to help every student to get a college education. So, they're a trillion dollars in debt, we don't have any jobs for them, the quality of education has gone down. So, it's a failed program."

Last week in Las Vegas, Paul put forth his plan to slash $1 trillion from the federal budget by ending the departments of Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Interior. The Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and Department of Defense would also see deep cuts.

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The aptly named Dick Armey is a real piece of work. As Think Progress noted, the former Speaker of the House turned Freedom Works astroturf teabagger leader came on Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker's new show on CNN and lied about the state of Texas benefiting from federal funding for higher education.

Dick Armey Wants To Completely Eliminate Any Federal Funding For Higher Education:

At one point, Spitzer asked Armey a series of questions about what he thinks the government should and should not be involved in funding to try to “add texture” to what the FreedomWorks chairman believes. During this question period, the CNN host asked Armey if he would “have the federal government pay for higher education?” Armey bluntly responded, “No, I would not.” He then went on to say that the university system of his home state of Texas has “not been made any better by federal money involvement. [...]

Armey’s claim that the “federal government’s involvement in education” hasn’t “benefited the students of America” is wildly false. [...]

Texas students are major benificiaries of this spending. Students in the state actually utilize federal student loans at a level above that of the average U.S. student. During the 2006-2007 school year, 83 percent of Texans utilized federal student loans, compared to 71 percent of Americans.

Spitzer did a good job of getting Dick Armey to lay out just what programs he and his corporate funded "Tea Party" would like to eliminate or drastically cut from federal government funding. Naturally military spending wasn't on the list, but Social Security privatization among a lot of other cuts to social programs were. These people like Dick Armey and his ilk aren't going to be happy until they turn us into a third world country with nothing but rich and poor. It was nice to see him get forced to lay out some specifics instead of just platitudes for once as he was in this interview, not that he was short on his usual platitudes as well as he answered. Big 'gubmit is evil, unless of course you privatize everything so it's used to just funnel money to your corporate funders and we need the "freedom" to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

That works our pretty well for folks like Dick Armey who aren't living on a shoestring and have a lot of large corporate interests making sure he's never going to be hurting or worrying about how he's going to feed his family or pay his bills. For the rest of us, not so much. I wonder if Dick Armey knows what the minimum wage is? My bet is he either doesn't know, or doesn't care just like the rest of these Republicans who are trying to con the working class into thinking care about anything but the interests of big business. The only "freedoms" a Dick Armey cares about are the "freedoms" for corporations to force Americans to compete with slave wages overseas while funneling our tax dollars to the wealthiest among us who pay his bills to help spread their propaganda.

Transcript below the fold via CNN.

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