On Wednesday, President Obama made a speech to the Business Roundtable. Yesterday the Washington Post awarded the speech four pinocchios. So what did the President say that wasn’t true?
The President stated:
“You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt.”
So what are the facts? The article cites some examples of exactly what the President claims never happened:
In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, Democrats in the Senate, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.), sought to attach a campaign finance reform bill to the debt ceiling after the Watergate-era revelations about Nixon’s fundraising during the 1972 election.
…In 1982, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker unleashed a free-for-all by allowing 1,400 nongermane amendments to the debt ceiling legislation, which resulted in five weeks of raucous debate that mostly focused on limiting federal court jurisdiction over school payer and busing. The debt limit only passed after lawmakers decided to strip all of the amendments from the bill.
…One of the most striking examples of a president being forced to accept unrelated legislation on a debt-ceiling bill took place in 1980. The House and Senate repealed a central part of President Jimmy Carter’s energy policy — an oil import fee that was expected to raise the cost of gasoline by 10 cents a gallon. Carter vetoed the bill, even though the United States was close to default, and then the House and Senate overrode his veto by overwhelming numbers (335-34 in the House; 68-10 in the Senate).
Please see the article at the Washington Post for more examples. I understand that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been known to stretch the truth for their own purposes, but we are at a critical point right now where spending cuts are necessary for the economic survival of our country. ObamaCare represents a very large increase in government spending. We simply cannot afford it right now.