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President Obama says he won’t negotiate with Republicans over his proposed more than $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling as a matter of principle because Congress “should pay the bills that they have already racked up.”
Set aside the obvious—that he championed the spending and signed the measures that racked up the bills, which Republicans opposed. There may be no person in America with less moral authority than Mr. Obama on this issue. Six years ago he led a Democratic effort to defeat a $781 billion debt-ceiling increase.
On March 16, 2006, Illinois’s junior Sen. Obama argued on the Senate floor that raising the debt limit was “a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills.” He complained that “Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” and added, “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.“
Even by Washington’s lax standards, Mr. Obama’s complaints today reek of hypocrisy.
This New Year’s Day he tartly said, “We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.” Who is suggesting we don’t? Not House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, or any other Republican leader. Quite the opposite. They want to cover the cost of the existing debt while cutting spending to prevent a fiscal catastrophe.
The House should pass a bill pairing spending cuts with a dollar-for-dollar debt-ceiling increase.
Republicans finally appear reasonably united around something practical and reasonable—the “Boehner Rule,” named after its author. It requires matching any debt increase dollar for dollar with spending cuts. Here, the GOP will likely find wide public support.
For example, in December 2012 76% of respondents in a Battleground Poll favored across-the-board spending cuts and 73% in a Rasmussen survey believed government should cut spending rather than increase it.
Read More: GOP Strategy