Flip-flop Republicans Were For Raising The Debt Ceiling Before They Were Against It
There was a time when House Republicans chose not to threaten the nation with default to get their agenda passed.The current crop of fanatical conservatives had a choice to make. They could join in and help President Obama pull the country out of the recession they caused or they could act on their hatred of the president and do everything they could to make him look bad, even if it means making the recession they started even worse. They chose to further cripple the economy. Republicans are hoping to avoid blame for taking the country hostage because they claim taxes are too high and the gov'mint is spending too much. Taxes are the lowest they have been since 1950. Government spending as a percent of GDP ( the standard measure) was above average in 2009, but has come down to the same average yearly spending of the last fifteen years. We have a revenue problem in other words.
White House and congressional negotiators are currently in the process of striking a deficit reduction deal, as most Republicans in Congress are refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling without deep cuts to public investments and social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. By doing so, these Republicans are essentially holding the country hostage, threatening the United States with default unless Democrats agree to these cuts.
Yet these Republicans were not always demanding hostages in exchange for allowing the country to pay its own bills. In November of 2004, Congress voted in both the House and Senate to hike the U.S. debt limit by $800 billion, which raised the total ceiling to $8.1 trillion.
A ThinkProgress review of the votes in both the House and Senate finds that a whopping 130 congressional Republicans voted to hike the debt ceiling that November that remain in the U.S. Congress today (either in their same seats or by coming to the Senate). These members of Congress did not demand draconian cuts in public investment that would’ve driven up unemployment and threatened the economy in return.
Of course, there was one other difference between then and today. President George W. Bush was in the White House, and Republicans did not have an incentive to try to politically damage him by holding the debt ceiling hostage. In 2002, during another hike in the nation’s debt limit under Bush, his press secretary Ari Fleischer said it was important to raise the debt ceiling because it was not the time “to engage in activites that could in any way raise questions about the full faith and credit of the United States”:
MR. FLEISCHER: The Senate passed, 68-29, a clean increase in the debt limit. The President praises the Senate’s action. The debt limit is a very important issue. This is not the time to play any — this is not the time to engage in any activities that could in any way raise questions about the full faith and credit of the United States. And the President urges the House to follow the Senate’s action on this matter.
These votes also prove that these Republicans, when faced with the default of their country, are willing to vote to raise the debt ceiling; this indicates that it is perhaps unnecessary to strike any sort of deficit reduction deal at all to win their votes. If Republicans and Democrats want to strike a grand bargain on deficit reduction, they can certainly do that in the context of the budget appropriations process rather than holding the debt limit hostage.
Rick Perry Doubled Texas’ Debt, Then Balanced Budget Through Accounting Gimmicks
Cowardly Proto-facist Rep. Allen West(R) Unloads On ‘Vile, Unprofessional, and Despicable’ Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
James O'Keefe's Latest 'Terrorist' Medicaid Sting Goes After Woman For Following Law
The victimhood myths of Palin fans - The reaction of her devoted fans to a blog post about poor attendance at a screening of "The Undefeated" is telling
