Who owns the debt-ceiling issue again? (Rebutting the New York Times)

Hotair ^ | 07/27/2011 | Ed Morrissey

[SeekAndFind]

Yesterday, I rebutted the strange New York Times chart making the rounds which makes it look as though the Bush administration and Republican Congresses have been responsible for all of the spending growth of the last generation. Today, John Hinderaker points out another chart from Heritage, which shows exactly where the debt expansion occurred, and who is responsible for it:

Of the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling we have now, $4.5 trillion got added by Democrat-controlled Congresses since taking control in 2007. That corresponds exactly with the expansion in spending by Democratic Congresses over the same period:

Again, this new chart doesn’t exactly let Republicans off the hook, either. In the six years preceding this $4.5 trillion expansion of debt limits, Republicans expanded it by $3.85 trillion themselves — over six years, not three. The increasing pressure of entitlement spending created much of the need for this, but Congress under both parties increased discretionary spending at the same time, too — and Democrats did more of that than Republicans, as this chart showed yesterday:

John writes:

The chart also responds implicitly to some recent Democratic Party talking points. The Democrats like to point out that the ceiling was raised 18 times during the Reagan administration. That’s right, an average of about once every six months. In other words, those increases were small and highly temporary, as you can see from the chart. It is also noteworthy that the total increase in the debt ceiling during the Reagan years was almost exactly equal to the increase in the debt ceiling during the Clinton administration. Neither, however, is in the same universe with the spiraling debt the Democrats have racked up since they took control of Congress in 2007.

Both parties have a great deal of responsibility for bringing us to where we are today. However, the assertion that it’s more the fault of George Bush and Republicans rather than Barack Obama and Democrats is patently absurd. These charts show exactly where spending increased, by how much, and the actions taken by Congress under control of each party — and every one of them shows the rate of increase in discretionary and mandatory spending rising faster under Democrats than Republicans, and the debt-ceiling hikes going up significantly faster.

All of this misses the point, however. We elected this Congress to change the way the federal government operates. Trimming $71 or $74 billion a year in spending won’t turn the tide on debt aggregation; we need fundamental, structural reform of spending that reduces to zero the amount of money we have to borrow on an annual basis to pay our bills.

[JPG]

The GOP spent too damn much money but O’Zero and the rats have made the GOP look like tightfisted widows with cobwebs in their purses. The DC rats have no intention of slowing down anything....spend, spend, spend and then spend some more. Ben Franklin said, “A Republic, if you can keep it”. Sorry to report, Ben, we have run out of road.

[garyb]

Thanks. With the huge amount of spending beyond income, estimated at 1.6T we can not just simply say, no more debt, as the results on governmental services will be too abrupt and badly managed.

And since it is August, with only two months left in the fiscal year it really is too late to cut much out of the current FY budget.

I would propose a ramp down starting in FY12 to reduce the deficit by 300B/year, which give congress and the administration, and the citizens through the vote, opportunities to prioritize what services to keep, and which to kill. After 5 - 6 years we would have a balanced budget, then cut from the budget 300B/year for five more years and use that revenue to reduce the debt.

[Psycho_Bunny]

“Republicans: We Rape You Less!”