Our Views: Keen voice on the debt

Let’s hear it for a higher national debt. Why?

“We cannot as a Congress pass spending bills and tax bills and then refuse to pay our bills. Refusing to raise the debt limit is like refusing to pay your credit card bill — after you’ve used your credit card.”

That statement was by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa , in rebuke to a young freshman senator from Illinois who gave a ringing speech about the evils of deficit spending.

Guess who that senator was, back in 2006.

His argument now, as President Barack Obama, is the same as Grassley’s was back then.

“The time to control the deficits and debt is when we are voting on the spending bills and the tax bills that create it,” Grassley said. “Raising the debt limit is about meeting the obligations we have already incurred. We must meet our obligations.”

All too true. Now that Obama is on the right side of the issue, we hope that Grassley speaks for his own party in refusing to make the debt limit into another dead-end political fight.

If you look up Obama’s remarks in the Congressional Record, you’ll find a lot of tea party rhetoric about the evils of excessive government spending. We agree with that, but in the case of the debt limit, as we found out in Obama’s first term, the issue before Congress is financial credibility, not the separate issue of financial restraint.

A great nation pays its bills, a lesson that then-Sens. Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton ignored in a party-line vote in 2006.

Comments

1) Comment by Whatnow - 25/01/2013

And this medium is part of the Obamanation that will bring America to it's knees. Unbiased, my foot!

2) Comment by 8point6 - 22/01/2013

@agagent: This medium, the a.p., abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, msnbc, etc, are still on their sugar high with the inauguration.

3) Comment by agagent - 22/01/2013

It is a lie that Obama had nothing to do with the debt. It his agenda that is bankrupting the country. If you blame Congress then Democrats have had full control or the balance of power since Janaury, 2007. Also, the Advocate is giving up the old Obama talking points: Obama said he had to spend the money to address the recession. If that were true the deficit spending could have stopped when the recession ended in June, 2009.Or "Bush made Obama do it." Never mind that the deficits did not take off until Democrats controlled Congress. I guess the Advocate is says it is the TEA Party and the Republicans' fault for not stopping the spendaholic Obama. Obama is just the innocent bystander.

4) Comment by crazycajun - 22/01/2013

In 2006 we hadn't been welcomed to the near collapse of the "WORLD" financial system yet. Oh yeah the President, Vice president and Hillary were responsible for all of this. Get a life why don't you. Even China right now is in recession.

5) Comment by [e-mail] - 22/01/2013

I'm so weary of the rhetoric put out by politicians about the national debt when it is only they who spend the money and pocket as much as they can. As far as I know the only president ever to eliminate the national debt was Andrew Jackson; but he was neither formally educated nor a progressive and so probably did not know any better

6) Comment by [e-mail] - 22/01/2013

"Our Views" is so in the Democrats' trick bag it's almost laughable if it were not so profoundly predictable; the sword of Damocles is a lot less secure if the rising debt is not curtailed and the sense of impending doom will linger unless it happens.

7) Comment by InPVille - 22/01/2013

Great points ScotB. Continuing to borrow 40 cents of every dollar spent to keep spending at the current level does nothing to enhance the nation's financial credibility. It reduces the nation's financial credibility. The old saying: "When you find that you have dug yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging" applies here. The "not paying your bills argument" presented by the President and his fellow travelers is a bold faced attempt to disguise the fact that what they are really about is increasing spending. In Washington mathematics a reduction in anticipated spending increase from 110% of last year's spending to only 105% of last year's spending is a spending CUT!

8) Comment by ScotB - 21/01/2013

The Congress has not passed a budget in 4 years. We have plenty enough revenue to pay our debts. Curtailing spending is not the same as not paying your bills, so this statement from "Our Views" is juvenile and inconsistent. Our moral obligation not to turn our progeny into indentured servants to pay a debt our generation created is a higher moral imperative than fulfilling Congresses previous drunken sailor spending authorizations. Yes, pay the debt - but stop the spending and stop increasing the debt. No increase to the debt ceiling!