Flashback: Obama calls adding $4 trillion to national debt “unpatriotic”

Yesterday, I wrote about the CBS News story showing that Barack Obama had added over $4 trillion to the national debt in less than three years, which puts the current President on track in one term (and probably less) to beat the record that took his predecessor two terms to set.  Some called this an unfair attack, noting that Congress authorizes spending, a point I addressed yesterday and which does Democrats no good at all.  But guess who else blamed rising national debt on a President?  Why, it’s Candidate (and then-Senator) Obama,. who not only blamed George Bush for adding more national debt than his previous 42 predecessors combined, but also questioned Bush’s patriotism for the same policies that Obama accelerated as President himself:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

“Credit card from the Bank of China”? That was a favorite phrase of Obama’s during the campaign.  A quick search shows that he used it in an April 2008 debate, this June 2008 appearance, and others as well, usually tying it to tax cuts.

And what exactly has Obama done as President? Despite claiming that he has known that deficit reduction has been needed since the first day he took office, Obama has offered no deficit reduction proposals in his term as President.  In fact, he has submitted budget proposals that have massively expanded deficit spending.

Just how patriotic is that?  After all, if Obama can use the increase in the national debt to question Bush’s patriotism, doesn’t it follow that increasing deficit spending by 152% per month makes Obama 152% more “unpatriotic” than Bush?

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