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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — The federal debt limit is a triumph of
false advertising.
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It doesn’t really limit the national debt. Whenever the false
ceiling has been reached, it has been raised – forcing unpopular
votes in Congress, but not the really hard ones it would take to
cut spending, raise revenues and balance budgets.
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Ranting about the debt is easier than taming it. So the same
political theatrics are played over and over again. The debt limit
has been raised 78 times since 1960. The current hassle over No. 79
is more contentious and divisive than the previous rounds because
of hardened lines in Congress, not only between Democrats and
Republicans but within their rosters, especially on the GOP side
where about 80 freshmen sent by tea party voters consider
compromise a crime.
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The hypocrisy of the whole process was summed up by an expert
witness, Barack Obama, now the president championing a debt limit
increase, when he tried to explain his own vote as junior senator
from Illinois to oppose the raise then-President George W. Bush
sought.
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He’d said in the Senate in 2006 that raising the debt limit was “a
sign of leadership failure.” That was in keeping with the
congressional pattern: Blame it on the president. No matter that
presidents don’t appropriate the spending that creates deficits.
Congresses do. But it is the presidents who must seek the increased
ceilings necessary to avoid defaulting on the debt.
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Now that’s Obama’s job.
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“When you’re a senator … this is always a lousy vote,” he said in
an Associated Press interview April 15. “Nobody likes to be tagged
as having increased the debt limit. … As president, you start
realizing … we can’t play around with this stuff.”
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As for his 2006 vote, which he now calls a mistake:
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“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.”
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The sorry fact is that they have become different
things.
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As Obama said, nobody in Congress likes voting for raising the debt
ceiling. That is in part because the act is so widely misunderstood
as a vote to increase the debt. It is not. The need for increased
ceilings to accommodate past borrowing is not the cause of
deficits, it is the effect of deficit spending, voted by Congress
and signed by presidents.
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Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican leader,
put the political distaste of debt limit votes more bluntly. “The
debt limit vote sucks,” he was said to have told a House GOP
conference, while urging approval of a six-month increase tied to
spending cuts.
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Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the
GOP leader, all voted for repeated debt limit increases when Bush
was president. The ceiling was raised seven times during the Bush
years, twice through parliamentary ploys that got it done without
direct votes.
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The current dispute is over what would be the fourth increase since
Obama became president. On Sunday he announced at the White House
that the leadership of both parties in both houses of Congress have
agreed on a deal to avoid default.
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Historically, the pattern on increases that both sides know are
vital has been to make the majority party push the increase and
take the political blame. That works when one party can deliver the
votes to do it or get enough votes from the other side to pass the
increase.
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It doesn’t work when one party or both balks at the
task.
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There’s political cover for Republicans in the increases that would
be tied to massive cuts in federal spending. But that’s been done,
or tried, before, with no lasting impact. One example: The 1985 law
that set caps on spending and imposed automatic cuts if they were
exceeded was tied to a debt limit bill. Within a term, it came
apart because Congress chafed at the restrictions and simply voted
to ignore them.
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In the 2011 version of the familiar fight, all the formulas are
10-year plans, envisioning cuts that wouldn’t survive the next five
election cycles. One Congress cannot force the next one to do
anything.
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A debt ceiling impasse in 1979, when Democrat Jimmy Carter was
president, led the government to essentially default, briefly, on
interest payments on about $120 million in Treasury bills. It was
only a technicality, the Treasury said, because the payments soon
were made.
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There were 18 increases in the debt limit when Ronald Reagan was
president. The icon of tax-cut Republicans, Reagan argued the case
for debt ceiling increases in terms cited by the Obama
administration throughout the 2011 dispute.
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“The full consequences of a default – or even the serious prospect
of default – by the United States are impossible to predict and
awesome to contemplate,” he said in a 1983 letter urging the Senate
to get the limit increased.
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Seeking another increase in the fall of 1987, Reagan honed in on
the habits of Congress.
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“Unfortunately, Congress consistently brings the government to the
edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan said.
“This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and
those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest
markets would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial
markets, the federal deficit would soar.”
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In 2011, same issue, same brinksmanship, same threats of default
disaster.
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—
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EDITOR’S NOTE – Walter R. Mears reported on government and politics
for The Associated Press in Washington for more than 40 years. He
is retired now and lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.
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