Barack Obama Is Against Raising The Debt Ceiling

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."--- Barack Obama

That statement seems to conflict with White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee who has publicly said "The impact on the economy would be catastrophic. I mean, that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008," in regards to Congress failing to act and raise the ceiling above the $14.3 trillion limit it stands at now.

The showdown that could, but won't, lead to a government shutdown, was explained in a previous post.

Bottom line is Republicans are of two minds, one group willing to raise the ceiling if there is a long term plan to lower the spending and pay off the debt and another group who, like Obama's statement above, is completely against raising the debt ceiling at all and that group also wants a forced budget that would keep spending under the limit already set.

The interesting part of Obama's statement above though, is it was made in a Senate Floor speech in March of 2006 when the issue was raising the debt ceiling to $9 trillion, versus where it stands now at $14.3 trillion and now Obama is President and the shoe is on the other foot.

Now, as many already know, our national debt has reached almost $14.1 trillion at this moment and it cannot all be attributed to the Obama administration. Decades of spending more than what we have and borrowing to cover those expenditures have brought us to the position we are in now.

With that said though, Barack Obama's administration spent more and his projected budgets and bailouts and stimulus program as well as the trillion dollar health care law, has projections, his own administration's projections I might add, to quadruple the deficit.

Flashback

March 2009:

• President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
• President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
• President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.
• President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.
• President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.
• President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
• President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

February 2010:

In addition, the President's budget would:

• Permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over 2007 pre-recession levels;
• Raise taxes on all Americans by more than $2 trillion over the next decade (counting health care reform and cap and trade);
• Raise taxes for 3.2 million small businesses and upper-income taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade;
• Borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010;
• Run a $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 -- $143 billion higher than the recession-driven 2009 deficit;
• Leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion in as late as 2020; and
• Double the publicly held national debt to over $18 trillion.[2]

After harshly criticizing President Bush for running $3.3 trillion in deficits over eight years, President Obama's budget would run $7.6 trillion in deficits over what would be his eight years in the Oval Office.[3] Moreover, President Obama would run up more debt over his eight years than all other Presidents in American history -- from George Washington through George W. Bush -- combined. As a result of these deficits, net interest spending would reach $840 billion in 2020.

September 2010:

In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

Jump forward to January 4, 2011:

It took just 7 months for the National Debt to increase from $13 trillion on June 1, 2010 to $14 trillion on Dec. 31. It also means the debt is fast approaching the statutory ceiling $14.294 trillion set by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last February.

Analogy:

When taking over the job of digging yourself out of a hole, you do not keep digging deeper, you try to crawl out.

When handed the job of lowering the deficit, you do not spend trillions more and borrow more, you tighten your belt and cut spending... the exact opposite of what Barack Obama has done since taking over the presidency.

The scariest part of all this?

Barack Obama still has two more years to go.



[Update] Mary Katherine Ham at The Daily Caller digs up a video showing Harry Reid is also against raising debt ceiling, again in 2006, making him against it before he was for it in 2011.

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