Byron York: Once a critic of deficits, Obama now goes for broke

Political analysis from York at the Examiner, documenting political role reversal over the "debt" ceiling, excerpt:

"You don't have to be a deficit hawk to be disturbed by the growing gap between revenues and expenses," said Sen. Barack Obama during a Nov. 3, 2005, debate on the Senate floor. At the time, Obama had been a senator for less than a year and the federal budget deficit was in fact shrinking, from $248 billion in fiscal 2006 to $160 billion in fiscal 2007.

Still, Obama seemed deeply concerned about the deficit, and he appeared to believe it when he said the only way to close the shortfalls was to force Congress to pay for what it spends. A few months later, on March 16, 2006, Obama returned to the same theme -- "You don't have to be a deficit hawk ..." -- in a sobering floor speech as the Senate considered whether to raise the nation's debt ceiling from $8.184 trillion to $8.965 trillion.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure," Obama said. "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."

The deficit, Obama argued, handcuffed government in many ways. The money paid in interest on the debt was money that could not be spent on education, transportation, disaster relief or many other worthy causes. And borrowing so much from foreign countries meant America's economy would be "tied to the whims of foreign leaders" who might not wish the best for the United States.

"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally," Obama concluded. "I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit." Obama made good on his promise.

Joined by then-Sen. Joe Biden, Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer and indeed every other Democrat, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. Republicans, who controlled the Senate with a Republican in the White House, voted for the increase, which became law.

Later, as president, Obama admitted his '06 debt ceiling vote was a political maneuver. "That was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country," Obama told ABC in April 2011. "As president, you start realizing, 'You know what? We can't play around with this stuff.' "

Now it seems the political roles have been reversed and we have the Dems advocating an increase in the ceiling and the GOP advocating for the economic suicide.

Another article by York here at the examiner documents how certain Democrat politicians have before threatened to use the leverage gained by a nearness to the debt ceiling and potential default as a bargaining tool.  When today there are assertions that this has never been threatened before.

The problem with that argument is that Democrats have indeed, in recent memory, while in the majority, threatened to stop a debt limit increase. It happened in 2009, when Democrats controlled the Senate and a group of influential lawmakers, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, were deeply concerned about big increases in entitlement spending. Feinstein and others wanted to see the creation of an independent entitlement commission, roughly based on the earlier military base closing commission, to enact cuts in entitlement spending.  But the lawmakers worried that Congress, especially then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House, would not go along with their plan.

So in November 2009, with the country near the debt limit and a move underway to raise the ceiling, the Democrats threatened not to go along unless their commission plan was enacted. “I will not vote for raising the debt limit without a vehicle to handle this,” Feinstein said at a November 2009 Senate Budget Committee hearing. “This is our moment.” Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh agreed. “There are rare moments of leverage in this institution where you can implement fundamental change,” he said. “This is one of those moments, we must seize it.” Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad also agreed. “You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change — a fundamental break from the current trend,” he said. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner also favored the plan, as did Independent-Democrat Joseph Lieberman.

A few left-wing bloggers were incensed over the whole episode and criticized the Democrats in ways similar to the ways they are criticizing Republicans today — see here and here.

In the end, the commission didn’t happen, Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, and all the Democratic senators except Bayh went along. But the bottom line is, it is simply not a new thing for members of Congress to attempt to attach policy proposals to debt ceiling legislation — and even for members of the majority party to threaten to vote against it if they don’t get what they want.

Looks like the Dems eventually got their deficit commission established without direct coercion.  This came to be known as the Simpleton-Bowels... err, ...  I mean the Simpson Bowles Deficit Commission which was established by President Obama.  So we can see that deficit reduction has been a very serious political goal of the Democrats for quite some time.

We for sure have a bi-partisan problem with fiscal ignorance and monetary ignorance, and if we take conventional political sides on this issue we are being foolish ourselves.  Ours should be a direct assault on this ignorance.

Objective and balanced journalism from Byron York at the Examiner here, some of the best I've seen (outside of Mike's and Dan Kervick's) throughout all of this.