"Past increases of debt ceiling since Kennedy" - Reagan Is The Debt Limit King! +199%

[TomCADem]

This will never get out, of course, because of the corporate media. Also, even as Geithner and Daley note that the debt ceiling has been raised 91 times since 1960, the corporate media will engage in false equivalency and suggest that Republicans and Democrats are equally at fault.

http://progressivetoo.com/2011/07/14/past-increases-of-debt-ceiling-since-kennedy/

Carter raised the debt ceiling 9 times for total increase of 59%.

Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times for a total increase of 199%.

* * *

Clinton raised the debt ceiling 4 times for a total increase of 44%.

George W. Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times for a total increase of 90%.

Obama has raised the debt ceiling 3 times for a total increase of 26%.

Adding the percentages of the Democratic presidents’ total debt ceiling increases (shown in blue) together reveals that President Ronald Reagan, arguably the most popular Republican president on this list, actually raised the debt ceiling by a higher percentage than all of the Democrats combined.

The Democrats’ total percentage increase is 152%. President Reagan increased the debt ceiling by 199% in his two terms in office.

The Republican presidents, shown in red, when added together, have raised the debt ceiling by a total of 414%.

[avaistheone1]

1. Bravo! Bookmarked and highly recommended

k&r

:kick:

[Tennessee Gal]

2. That says it all! Thanks for posting.

Boehner needs this shoved in his face.

[emulatorloo]

3. Good Resource. For letters to the editor, a television campaign, Ideologically mixed message boar

boards. THANK YOU

HA HA wish I could launch a television ad campaign.

[Tennessee Gal]

4. Read the comments at the link. nt

[femrap]

5. K and R

I love facts. Thank you for posting this.

I was discussing this w/ my mother the other day. She rarely gets upset over politics, but now she is PISSED. She demanded the addresses and phone #s of her 'representatives.' She wants the Rich to be TAXED!

[femrap]

6. Walter Cronkite would have

reported this.

How did America become so stupid?

Maybe Obama should borrow some tactics from Perot and get out an easel w/ paper and some Sharpies.

[usregimechange]

7. GOP the nominal fake slogan party

[hughee99]

8. Isn't the Debt ceiling raised by congress, not the president?

Because reading this, you might get the impression that this is done by the president.

[Igel]

14. It's like the budget.

Obama's budget was trashed on arrival and a new one, one presumes, will be ironed out in the House and Senate for his signature. He'll have the choice of vetoing or signing, and they'll have the choice of overriding or reworking some sort of budget.

In any event, except for those out specifically to defend Obama and find the distinction necessary for his defense, history will say whatever happens is Obama's budget. In 2012, if he loses and the day after inauguration the new president and congress decide to spend $2 trillion on tiddly-winks that $2 trillion increase will dutifully be ascribed to Obama.

No, it's not fair, and, yes, there are fairer ways of doing things. It's just that nobody actually likes the fairer ways of doing things and instead usually opt for even less fair ways of doing things.

Things like the stimulus spending, for example, are routinely excised from anything Obama might be responsible for. "Mikey did it!" is effectively the response. But that only holds true for people we like. Reducing spending is treason if it's spending we like; but to say that reducing spending is treason when it's our guys reducing spending we don't like is beyond the pale. Asymmetry shows underlying structure. One of the more insightful things Chomsky wrote.

[Booster]

9. K&R Sent to everyone I know.

[Cool Logic]

10. Neither Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Obama have raised the debt ceiling.

It was done by the Congress each and every time.

[snot]

11. K&R'd & bookmarked.

[PSPS]

12. Reagan turned the US from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation.

From a 2004 piece in the Washington Post:

The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26402-2004Jun8.html

[robinlynne]

13. Why isn't this Obama's talking point, instead of "we need to reign in the deficit", which was,

as I recall, the Republican talking point exactly.

[Igel]

16. It was.

It was also Pelosi's (along with "we'll be responsible and pass an actual budget").

Something about suddenly recognizing that there's a recession and a financial crisis going on in the US and worldwide made all talk of fiscal constraint untenable. Under such conditions the only responsible, adult thing is to crank up deficit spending and increase the debt. A balanced budget in a recession is utter idiocy.

So it's really a good thing that there wasn't any financial crisis or recession, domestic or worldwide, in the early 1980s because then we'd have to argue that whatever conservatives say now, they're right in admiring Reagan because he did precisely the right thing in increasing the deficit and debt.

[TomCADem]

18. Agree it was. But it was drowned out by the corporate media's man crush on RW policies...

Do I even need to remind everyone how the media initially portrayed Ryan as a great hero for proposing to destroy Medicare outright by replacing it with a voucher plan.

What these facts show is that Republicans are engaging in unprecedented economic terrorism.

[defendandprotect]

15. k

[nilram]

17. K&R. Send this to media outlets!

Maybe one of them will pick it up (by mistake).