Obama Confuses The Problem With The Solution

One of the most telling statements in President Obama’s address on the debt debate last night was his plaintive, poor-me whine that “In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine.”

True, but isn’t that precisely the problem?

Still complaining that he was being picked on by those mean Republicans, Obama added:

Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every President has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it 7 times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, August 2nd, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.

This exercise in historical revisionism leaves out two embarrassing points:

1. In 2006 Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling, proclaiming:

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.

2. Obama has himself blocked a deal by insisting that any extension of the debt ceiling extend past the next election, into 2013. This insistence conveniently ignores the fact that the great preponderance of all those past ceiling raisings were for much shorter periods of time that Obama demands. In fact, I’m not sure that any of the previous extensions specified a time period as long as Obama claims as his due.

Keith Hennessey asks, Are short term debt limit increases unusual? His answer:

Over the last twenty years Congress and the President have acted 44 times to increase the debt limit….

The average period between increases was 333 days (almost 11 months), and the median was 131 days (just over four months).

If we look at the last thirty years, our average moves toward smaller and more frequent debt limit actions by Congress. The U.S. government spent more than 10 of the past 30 years operating under debt limit increase statutes that lasted less than a year….

A debt limit extension of three, six, or nine months would be routine based on historic practice.

Similarly, as Morgen Richmond has pointed out (citing a July 1 Congressional Research Service report),

the President has already signed off on 3 increases in the debt ceiling since entering office (totaling almost $3 trillion), and the last 6 increases were enacted while Democrats held a majority in both houses of congress. Not only were all these deals passed without an insistence on tax increases, but … the average period of time between each of them was only about 8 months.

In asking for an 18 month extension of the debt ceiling, President Obama, his complaint to the contrary notwithstanding, doesn’t want to be treated the same as other presidents (or as he himself has been treated so far). He wants special treatment.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Say What?