Blogs For Victory

And you bet he does – because now he’s on the opposite side and would prefer we all forget what he said back then about raising the debt ceiling. Fortunately, his words back then are not as hard to find as his birth certificate is today – from NRO’s The Corner:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. 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. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Mr. President, you betcha! In fact, I couldn’t have said it better, myself. Now, we know you were just saying that because a Republican was President at the time. We know, further, that you were just kidding – how on earth could a liberal Democrat ever be against shoving us further in to debt? We know, ultimately, that you are a dishonest man who’s only goal in life is to advance himself by whatever means necessary. But, that doesn’t change the fact that raising the debt ceiling is, indeed, a failure of leadership – and that America deserves better.

The real pity is that we don’t know if our GOP leadership is really up to this fight – this is the perfect opportunity, vastly better than the recent budget fight, to really force some change. Essentially, we’ve got Big Government over a barrel. We should firmly hold to the principal that we refuse an increase until structural changes are made to the budget. The best such change would be a balanced budget amendment which requires, as necessary, the shut-down of all government departments save Defense, Veterans, Justice, State and Social Security/Medicare any time the budget is out of balance – and they stay shut down until it is. And if we don’t get it, we just refuse to raise the limit and let Obama try to figure out how to keep things moving without the ability to pile on more debt.

We can finesse this issue to the point where we’re the one’s fighting for fiscal sanity without any risk to those things most vital to America and to American citizens. Let the Democrats go to the mat trying to defend the Departments of Commerce and Labor…let the Democrats, in short, try to prove to the American people that all the nonsense in Big Government is so important that we must go ever further in to debt to fund it. That is a battle I’d love to have. But, will the GOP leadership do it? So far, some firm noises are being made…time will tell if that is all just talk, or real courage.