Last week Speaker of the House John Boehner freaked out those who were paying attention when he began talking about the debt ceiling.

On ABC's This Week on Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi articulated those concerns by saying: Here they go again.

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"Last year just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused our credit rating to be lowered," Pelosi told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "This is not a responsible, mature sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit, we have to do it in a balanced way. The Speaker wants go over the edge."

But Pelosi did agree with Boehner that it's the right time to begin addressing some of the financial issues the country is facing that will climax at the end of this year: the end of the Bush tax cuts and payroll tax holiday, with deep automatic domestic and defense cuts scheduled to take place. And oh yeah, the debt ceiling will need to be raised again.

This article appears in May 17-23, 2012.