As President Obama prepares to raise the debt ceiling — after the Senate waived its opposition last week — $5 trillion hikes evidently are no longer “unpatriotic” as Obama said they were in 2008 while describing former President George W. Bush’s $4 trillion increase over eight years.
The White House requested authority earlier this month to raise the debt ceiling to $16.4 trillion, up $1.2 trillion from last summer and more than $5 trillion from the statutory limit of $11.3 trillion set in October 2008 before Obama took office. The debt at the time Obama entered the White House was $10.6 trillion. The ceiling was raised to $12.1 trillion within a month of his inauguration.
Such increases used to be anathema to Obama, who voted in March 2006 along with all his Senate Democratic colleagues against Bush’s hike of the debt ceiling to $8.9 trillion.
At the time, Obama called raising the debt limit “a sign of leadership failure.” Out on the campaign trail in July 2008, he suggested the move was downright un-American.
“The problem is that the way Bush has done it in the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion from the first 42 presidents. No. 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome. So we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back. $30,000 for every man woman and child. That’s irresponsible, that’s unpatriotic,” he said.
In April 2011, during the heat of the debt ceiling debate with Congress, Obama expressed regret for his 2006 stance, which he said was delivered from “the vantage point of a senator versus the vantage point of a president.”
“When you’re a senator, traditionally what’s happened is, this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit — for the United States by a trillion dollars. As president, you start realizing, you know what, we, we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States.”
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10 Responses
Obama is the most anti American pres we ever had. go ahead re-elect him the first 4 years will be a cake walk compared to the next 4.
The debt ceiling has to rise. When he was in the Senate he made the populist choice and voted No, but as president he realized how bad the alternative is.
In all fairness, Americans are united in the belief that their own taxes should go down (whether other people’s should go up is a separate issue), and that government programs they benefit from should not be cut (whether other people’s pet programs should be cut is a separate issue). Given the consensus for not taxing, but still spending, we have a problem that transcends partisanship.
Just ask your friends and neighbors who wants to cut social security, or medicaid (which pays for a lot of frum kids’ medical care), or WIC (notice the stores in our neighborhoods that accept it – you won’t see that in most good neighborhoods). Ask who wants to cut back on police protection, or on the ability of the US to project military strength in hte middle east? Notice the whining whenever a local government services is cut.
And then ask who wants to pay more taxes?
Who says it “has” to rise? Stop the mad increase in spending, and it won’t have to rise.
Just words, just speeches.
Paraphrase of Nixon response to David Frost questions, as Obama would put it:
If I do it, it’s not unpatriotic.
“And then ask who wants to pay more taxes?”
If president (government) will not allow to move production overseas, American people will have jobs and will no need to raise taxes.
There’s really only one person here who is unpatriotic, and his name begins with O-B-A-M-A. He is downright un-American, and I wish we could at the very least impeach him.
Stop complaining about the debt unless you want to give up something (as opposed to asking others to give up things).
To everyone who wants government spending to fall, please name a program that you or your family benefit from that you want to see cut. How much do you want to slow down police and fire response? How about cutting the military back to what it was pre-World War II, where it was incapable of foreign adventures? Note the howls in YWN when any local services are cut?
For those who don’t want jobs overseas, how low are you willing to cut your own salary so you can be competitive with overseas workers? How much extra would you pay for domestically produced goods over imported ones? WOuld you gladly pay $200 for an all-American cell phone that now costs $50? How about $10/gallon for all-American gas? How about Macy’s prices for K-mart (or Walmart) shirts?
7,
Why force an american company to put out an inferior product just so we could say it was produced here? Ford/ Detroit tried that for years which is why the “foreign” car market skyrocketed here in the USA.
Remember, if a company puts out a shoddy product, no one will buy it and the company will go bankrupt so those jobs go bye-bye anyway.