House Passes Clean Debt Ceiling Hike

by William Teach | February 12, 2014 7:37 am

Many conservatives/Republicans range from agitated to apoplectic. Liberals are crowing. The Washington Post’s uber-leftists (like the WP’s opinion pages aren’t chock full of them, has to be at least a 85-15% split) goes with this provocative headline

GOP debt limit extortion is dead[1]

Because attempting to limit the insane debt increases is apparently a bad thing. Remember, the debt was $10.626 trillion on President Bush’s last day in office. The debt clock now stands at $17.325 trillion. It rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It’s risen almost $7 trillion during the Obama pResidency in slightly over 5 years.

Politico called it The GOP’s debt ceiling surrender[2]. The New Republic claims[3] the Tea Party is folding on the debt. Others went just as crazy. But what was this really about? A different Washington Post writer, Robert Costa[4], writes

Ahead of the midterm elections, Boehner argued that now is not the time to get drawn into weeks of dramatic headlines and fiscal battles with President Obama. “We’re not going to make ourselves the story,” he said. He spoke about the need for the party to not get mired in damaging endeavors.

Supposedly the room of Republicans were stunned. Perhaps there were a few who disagree with the tactic. But, since they are all politicians, I suspect most understood. If not, their staffs probably explained it to them. There is zero point in getting into another debt ceiling fight ahead of the mid-terms. No matter how it shakes out, Republicans will Be Blamed. We do not control the majority of the media, especially the national ones. We do not control the presidency nor the Senate. The idea is to retake the Senate this year while holding the House. Ace notes[5]

I remarked last week or the one before that I’m personally not enraged by this. We’re getting beaten; we don’t have the cards.

There is a bit of “theater,” however, in the Republicans votes on this. As AllahPundit notes, the Republicans voting for the debt ceiling hike are either leadership, or blue-state Representatives who have to answer to blue-state constituents, or people who are, conveniently, about to retire.

And I guess I could be mad about that too, but that gets close to being angry to find some politics going on in politics.

He also notes that there are better things to fight about. Well, fighting the debt ceiling is important, but there is a time and place to do it politically. We could not win it. Pick the fights correctly. Do not do anything to ruin the chance of regaining full control of Congress.

The Lonely Conservative[6] notes a dire prediction by the CBO regarding the debt. Unfortunately, the liberal media will not explain the danger of the skyrocketing debt, and Democrats do not care about it.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[7]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[8].