Somewhat lost amidst the complete chaos in the GOP about who will actually be the next Speaker of the House is the fact that the debt ceiling will need to be raised before November 5th. We've been through this enough now to know that failure to raise the debt ceiling and default on our debts will be incredibly bad not just to the US economy, but to the entire world economy. Senator Reid has recognized the threat and called for the debt ceiling to be raised immediately:
If Congress waits around for the Republican Family Feud to resolve itself, we’ll risk a government shutdown and defaulting on our national debt. It’s time for the responsible members of the Republican Party to work with Democrats and forge a bipartisan budget deal, take the threat of default off the table, and protect middle class families from economic disaster.
This doesn't go far enough.
Boehner's tenure as Speaker may be one of the weakest and worst in history, but with his retirement (and hopefully his no-longer-give-a-fuck attitude) he can do some good and secure a long-term positive legacy for himself. He can get rid of the debt limit entirely and remove this horribly damaging artifact from being used as a bargaining chip for nihilists who apparently don't give a shit if they tank the world economy in the process.
It would require McConnell also signing on to this, who has already used it as a bargaining chip to extract policy considerations, but maybe, just maybe, there's a hint of decency left in these two guys to realize that, hey, maybe we shouldn't be playing chicken with the world economy? Maybe, just maybe, if the next president is Republican and Democrats happen to control congress at some point, we wouldn't want THEM to hold the world economy hostage for their own agendas?
I don't really care how it's done. Either give the power to the Treasury to raise the debt limit or get rid of the law entirely, but it needs to be done. It doesn't matter if the president is a Democrat or Republican, no one should be able to use the threat of economic catastrophe to extract policy concessions. End of story.