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View Full Version : 4 Pinocchios for Obama claim on debt-ceiling negotiations



red states rule
09-19-2013, 03:28 PM
This will not be reported on the nightly news nor will anyone on MSNBC even mention this

Also I wonder if this employee of the Washington Post is still employed?





For those who objected to a recent decision by Glenn Kessler (http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/06/wapo-fact-check-no-pinocchios-for-i-didnt-set-the-red-line/) to forgo assignment of Pinocchios to President Obama for his “I didn’t set the red line” statement on Syria, perhaps the latest fact check from the Washington Post will assuage that indignation. Kessler rips Obama’s claim (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/19/obamas-claim-that-non-budget-items-have-never-been-attached-to-the-debt-ceiling/) that attaching non-budgetary items to a debt-ceiling increase was somehow unprecedented, and amounted to an attempt “to extort a president.” Au contraire, Kessler writes:

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. Their efforts were defeated by a filibuster, but it took days of debate and the lawmakers were criticized by commentators (and fellow lawmakers) for using “shotgun” tactics to try to hitch their pet cause to emergency must-pass legislation.

President Obama said that GOP lawmakers now are trying to “extort” repeal of the health care law via the debt limit, but that’s also what Democrats wanted to do with President Nixon, who opposed the campaign-finance reforms.

Indeed, Linda K. Kowalcky and Lance T. LeLoup wrote in a comprehensive 1993 study (http://themonkeycage.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/cooke-katzen-1954-public-debt-limit.pdf)of the politics of the debt limit, for Public Administration Review, that “during this period, the genesis of a pattern developed that would eventually become full blown in the mid-1970s and 1980s: the use of the debt ceiling vote as a vehicle for other legislative matters.”

Previously, they noted, the debt limit bill had been linked to the mechanics of debt management, but now anything was fair game. Major changes in Social Security were attached to the debt bill; another controversial amendment sought to end the bombing in Cambodia. Kowalcky and LeLoup list 25 nongermane amendments that were attached to debt-limit bills between 1978 and 1987, including allowing voluntary school prayer, banning busing to achieve integration and proposing a nuclear freeze.
Kessler even offered the White House a chance to comment on the actual history of debt-ceiling battles. They took a pass, perhaps too embarrassed to comment. Kessler assigned Obama four Pinocchios, advising him and the White House to “never say never,” at least not without doing some cursory research first.
Furthermore, the fight over ObamaCare most certainly has some relation to both the budget and the debt. The ACA was barely deficit-neutral for only the first decade of its run under the rosiest of assumptions, and only because it had a three-year head start on tax collections. With the jobs market shifting to part-time work to avoid the employer mandate and companies dumping their health insurance coverage, the outflow of subsidies will likely outstrip those initial projections and tilt ObamaCare into the red much sooner.


http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/19/wapo-4-pinocchios-for-obama-extort-claim-on-debt-ceiling-negotiations/