Debt Ceiling? What Debt Ceiling?

Posted on March 18, 2006

Congress blew the lid off of the spending cap Thursday by voting to allow President Bush to borrow $781 billion in order to keep the government going.

The Senate, on a 52-48 vote, sent to President Bush a bill raising the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion and preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes. When the government reaches the new ceiling, expected sometime next year, the debt will represent $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
The House avoided an election-year vote on raising the debt limit by automatically sending the bill to the Senate when it passed a budget last year. The bill passed the Senate just hours before the House was expected to approve another $91 billion to fund the war in Iraq and provide more aid to hurricane victims. The partisan vote also came as the Senate continued debate on a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1, that would produce a $359 billion deficit.
In twin setbacks for GOP leaders, the Senate voted 51-49 to add $3 billion to the budget for heating subsidies for the poor and 73-27 to add $7 billion for education, health and worker safety accounts. The moves broke through President Bush's overall "cap" on agency budgets to be funded later in the year through appropriations bills. Congress has now increased the debt ceiling four times by a total of $3 trillion since Bush took office five years ago.
*****
Democrats blasted the bill, saying it was needed because of fiscal mismanagement by Bush, who came to office when the government was running record surpluses. "When it comes to deficits, this president owns all the records," said Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The three largest deficits in our nation's history have all occurred under this administration's watch."

This is a national disgrace. The core concepts of fiscal conservatism have been thrown out the window, and been replaced by gluttonous spending coupled with medieval social policies which are designed to strip away the gains made by women in the past hundred years. This administration has been liberal where it should have been conservative, and conservative where it should have been liberal. The results are a disaster.