John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, “We fought the good fight; We just didn’t win.”

No, Mr. Speaker, you did not fight the good fight; you are a child and you throw tantrums when you don’t get what you want. You, and any other politician that supported the government shutdown have no respect for the governing system our founding fathers built and you have no right to continue any form of United States governing come re-election, November 2014.

In President Obama’s speech about the government shutdown resolution, he said, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it, but don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country’s about.”

And to counter what Boehner said, Obama also noted, “There are no winners here. These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy. The American people are completely fed up with Washington. Probably nothing has done more damage to American credibility in the world than the spectacle we have seen in the last couple of weeks.”

Even Sen. John McCain said, “The real losers are the American people.”

According to the consulting firm Macroeconomics Advisors, The House shutdown cost our country roughly $24 billion in the last couple weeks and the Republican’s drag-down tactics since 2010 have cost us about $700 billion and nearly a million (non-furloughed) jobs — which has made the unemployment rate rise to about 8.5 percent instead of the projected value of less than 7 percent.

On Oct. 9, I published a column in regard to the shutdown and more importantly, government partisanship. I quoted George Washington, reading, ”… and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

And I closed the column with another, “The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”

This is why we, as a capable people, need to vote those responsible for the drag-down tactics that lead to the government shutdown, out of office. The next election occurs in about a year and until that time all of Congress will be doing everything within their power to soothe you over the damage they created and the embarrassment they caused this nation.

Our country and our media need to flog the House extortionists like the proverbial dead horse with a brigade of accusatory questions as if they were on a witness stand — to be honest, it’s too late, Congress has lost my trust. Extortion, simply stated by the Oxford Dictionary is “the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.”

The GOP didn’t just threaten America, they threatened the world with a government debt default simply because they don’t like the Affordable Care Act that was passed four years ago. Now I don’t know enough about economics to argue why this is bad so I’ll pull some words from the Oct. 5 issue of The Economist:

“America enjoys the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of printing the world’s reserve currency. Its government debt is considered a safe haven, which is why Uncle Sam can borrow so much, so cheaply. America will not lose these advantages overnight. But anything that undermines its creditworthiness — as the farce in Washington surely does — risks causing untold damage in the future. It is not just that America would have to pay more to borrow. The repercussions of an American default would be both global and unpredictable.

It would threaten financial markets. Since American Treasuries are very liquid and safe, they are widely used as collateral. They are more than 30% of the collateral that financial institutions such as investment banks use to borrow in the $2 trillion ‘tri-party repo’ market, a source of overnight funding. A default could trigger demands by lenders for more or different collateral; that might cause a financial heart attack like the one prompted by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. In short, even if Obamacare were as bad as tea-party types say it is (see Lexington), it would still be reckless to use the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to repeal it, as some Republicans suggest.”

I urge you to share this column and this sentiment with your social circle, provided you wish to end this tomfoolery of a governing body we have. Welcome back Congress, but don’t expect a vote from me.