Debt Ceiling Vote 'Routine'?
Obama said raising the debt ceiling has been a common occurrence over the last 60 years. That's true, but this request is the largest in history, even in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Obama, July 25: In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine. Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every president has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it seven times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, Aug. 2, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.
Obama was mostly correct when he said that raising the debt ceiling was something that every president has done since the 1950s. The debt ceiling increased during every presidency since the 1940s — with the exception of President Harry Truman — according to the Office of Management and Budget's historical tables on federal debt statutory limits. Truman became president on April 12, 1945, nine days after the debt ceiling was increased from $260 billion to $300 billion. The debt limit wasn't raised again until 1954, during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, when it went from $275 billion to $281 billion. (Truman had reduced the debt limit to $275 billion in 1946.)
He is also correct about President George W. Bush and largely correct about President Ronald Reagan, OMB's budget tables show. Bush raised the debt limit seven times. Under Reagan, there were 18 debt-ceiling votes — although one of them didn't raise the limit but rather changed its effective date. Reagan raised the debt by more than $1.8 trillion in his two terms in office, going from about $935 billion to about $2.8 trillion. And Bush raised the debt limit by more than $5.3 trillion, going from about $5.95 trillion to $11.315 trillion.
The White House, according to House Republicans and various news reports, have requested that the debt limit be raised by $2.4 trillion. That figure matches the president's own FY 2012 budget, which projects that the debt subject to the statutory limit that year would be more than $16.6 trillion, or nearly $2.4 trillion more than the current $14.29 trillion limit. And the administration has backed a recent proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that would raise the debt limit by that amount.
There have only been a few occasions when the debt limit was raised at one time by anything close to $2.4 trillion. In August 1978 and April 1979, the debt limit was raised $398 billion and $430 billion, respectively, under President Gerald Ford. Those are increases of almost $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion when adjusted for inflation. In November 1990, during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the debt was increased by $915 billion. That's nearly $1.6 trillion in inflation-adjusted figures. And in May 2003, during George W. Bush's presidency, the debt limit was raised by $984 billion, or roughly $1.2 trillion when adjusted for inflation.
Corporate Jets, Big Oil and Seniors
Obama recycled a well-worn but misleading Democratic talking point when he accused Republicans of favoring tax breaks for oil companies and owners of private jets at the expense of cuts for Medicare recipients:
Obama: Most Americans, regardless of political party, don’t understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask a corporate jet owner or the oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don’t get.
It's true that GOP lawmakers have so far rejected Democratic proposals to raise taxes on anyone, even oil companies and jet owners, while the House-passed Republican budget called for major reductions in the future growth of Medicare spending. But nobody should get the idea that raising taxes only on one unpopular industry and high-flying corporate suits will significantly reduce the deficit.
According to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, repealing all the tax preferences for the oil and gas industry, as called for in Obama's fiscal 2012 budget proposal, would yield just $36 billion over the next decade. And eliminating tax breaks for corporate jets would yield only about $3 billion over the same period, according to sources quoted by Bloomberg News. That's about four-tenths of 1 percent of the $9.5 trillion in total deficits projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office over the same 10 years.
So while attacking oil companies and jet-set corporate executives may have political appeal, it doesn't qualify as serious deficit-cutting. Raising the $1.2 trillion in added revenue that the president reportedly is seeking will require a lot more than that.
'Fundamental Changes' to Entitlements?
Read the rest of the analysis at the FactCheck.org site.
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