After House Republicans began publicly opposing an increase in the debt ceiling, the White House began a public-relations offensive to paint them as radical and irresponsible. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned that voting to oppose the increase would be “highly irresponsible,” while White House adviser said it would create the first default “purely by insanity. … The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.” But as Jake Tapper reported about two weeks ago, the President himself liked toying with it when he was in the Senate:
Four year ago, however, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted the exact way President Obama is now cautioning senators not to do.
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said on March 16, 2006. “Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership . Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
Tapper asked the White House to explain this little hypocrisy. Gibbs said that Barack Obama just wanted to “make a point about needing to get serious about fiscal discipline.” Good to know that he takes it a lot less seriously these days as President, as his budgets have already proven.
Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.
Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!
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