Republicans Love Government

Much like Footloose, I’m guessing the “winner” of the current debt ceiling game of chicken will be accidental.  Either President Obama or the Republicans will get to a point-of-no-return (i.e., get their shoelace caught on the tractor’s brake) and the other side will blink.  It’s hard to predict at this point and I suppose we won’t really know until the November 2012 elections.

Of course, the dirty little secret is that both parties have a long track record of raising the debt ceiling.  You might expect that from Democrats, but Republicans have a storied history all their own.  After all, it’s pretty challenging to cut taxes and increase spending without slipping further into debt.  Without increasing the federal government’s line of credit, what would happen to all of those government programs Republicans love?  Sure, Republicans want to see spending on some government programs reduced, but time and time again they’ve blinked and helped raise the debt ceiling, ensuring that the federal government can continue to write checks.

Since 1950, the federal government has taken action to increase the debt ceiling 86 times. ¹  Now admittedly, some of these increases were much larger than others (and some were temporary), but that’s still 86 times Congress and the President worked together to increase the debt ceiling.  Using my crude estimation of party control, the debt ceiling has been increased nearly as many times when Republicans had at least partial control over the federal government (21 times) as when Democrats were in control (25 times) (See the above table).  Further, during this time period there were nearly twice as many increases under Republican presidents (57) as under Democratic Presidents (29).  (Notably, the debt ceiling was increased 18 times while Ronald Reagan was president.)

Additionally, while the Republican position on the debt ceiling is clearly being driven by its Tea Party wing — many of whom were only recently elected — there are a whole lot of Republicans currently serving in Congress who only a few years ago voted to increase the federal debt limit.    The difference was they had a fellow Republican in the White House.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I think this situation is best summarized in a song.  Now, I could have been consistent and picked any number of tremendous songs from the Footloose soundtrack (particularly because I’m convinced Obama is so frustrated that before each day of negotiations he channels his inner Ren McCormack and dances around the Oval Office blasting Never to psych himself up), but when thinking about debt ceilings and limits, I just couldn’t get the chorus of the Take It To The Limit out of my head.  So, please feel free to sing this to the tune of Take It To The Limit by The Eagles.

Take The Debt Past The Limit

We do it, when we are, in control
Though we’d rather, not admit, we did
We wouldn’t want, to shut the place down, on our watch
And take the blame

But now Obama’s in the White House
(And next year’s an election)
So our stance we must change
(At least to the public)
But since we love government
Keep on spending on, the programs we
All secretly, adore

Close your eyes and pretend
Obama is a Republican
And take the debt, past the limit, one more time

We can spend, all our time, talking tough
We can spend, all our time, spending taxes
It doesn’t matter, if we’re consistent, at all
We’ll take the high ground

So keep on screaming to cut spending
(Somewhat hypocritically)
We’re going to get concessions
(Still fund our pet projects)
Because we want to keep spending
On fighter planes, and prison cells
And more things, we love

Close your eyes and pretend
Obama is a Republican
And take the debt past the limit one more time

Take the debt past the limit
Take the debt past the limit
Take the debt past the limit one more time