Biden demands clean lipstick for his spending pig
Hugo Gurdon
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In arguing with Republicans over raising Washington’s legal debt limit, President Joe Biden tries to make a virtue of intransigence.
House Republicans passed a bill 217-215 last week to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion and cut deficit spending by $4.8 trillion over 10 years. It’s the only legislation that exists to avoid default, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Monday could come as early as June 1. Yet, while declining even to consider it, the Biden Democrats say it is Republicans who are leading the nation off a cliff.
AMERICA’S DEAD-END DEMOCRACY PROMOTION
But consider the facts. Deficit spending adds to debt — sorry to state the obvious — and since we’re already $31.4 trillion in hock, it’s logical and balanced to deal with them together. Republicans have done their part by agreeing to raise the ceiling so the U.S. doesn’t default on what it owes lenders. Simultaneously, they ask reasonably for parallel bipartisan efforts to reduce spending so the nation will live more nearly within its means over the next decade.
But Biden and his party refuse point-blank, feign outrage at the very suggestion, and demand a blank check. They say Republicans must accept the full faith and credit of the Democratic Party (of all improbable things), lift the debt limit with no strings attached, and accept on trust the Biden gang’s assertion that it will go along with spending restraint in separate budget talks.
The president calls this debt limit hike “clean.” Who doesn’t like things better when they are clean? The inverse implication is clear; anyone arguing for something different is seeking what is dirty.
This is not a neutral or apt description of matters as they truly are. It is arguably a lot dirtier to let Congress keep spending without doing anything to oblige its Democrats to tighten their belts rather than keep on gourmandizing.
The word “clean” is one of those triumphs of Democratic messaging that we have all become accustomed to. It is enabled by their allies in 90% of the news media, who portray the Left’s recklessness as sober and reasonable while denigrating conservatives’ limited efforts to grope toward good fiscal policy as extreme, dangerous, and out of touch with reality.
The word “clean” has been repeated endlessly since January, when the ceiling was reached, and has quickly become a convenient journalistic shorthand. Write “clean” in a news story about the debt ceiling, even if only to be concise, and you are doing the Democrats’ messaging for them and their leader in the White House. You are putting lipstick on a pig.
If Biden will not discuss spending restraint when hashing out ways to keep America solvent, when will he do so? His answer is that he will get to it in budget talks. But in this, he is like Wimpy, the bloated character in Popeye cartoons who would “gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
How has such official mooching become the standard of respectable governance? Why is it laudable to avoid serious discussion and delay actual fiscal restraint? Why are Democrats likelier now to keep their word than they have been before? Why wouldn’t they pocket Republican capitulation, as they have before, and move on to their next bait and switch?
They just sapped the hapless Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in precisely this way on permitting reform to get his vote on the spending splurge of the Inflation Reduction Act. If they’ll happily do it to one of their own party, what reason is there to believe they wouldn’t pull the same stunt on Republicans?
Democrats fear that if they acknowledge the link between spending and the debt limit, Republicans will use it as what the Wall Street Journal called a “cudgel” against them every time they, inevitably, come back and ask for permission to borrow yet more. Again that is odd phrasing. Aren’t Democrats using “default” as a cudgel against fiscally anxious Republicans?
There are three ways to avoid repeated confrontation on the debt ceiling. The first is to agree that spending and debt are inextricably linked and so should be dealt with together in a bipartisan fashion. But Democrats would regard that sensible step as a political humiliation. The second is similar to the first, for it is to spend less so the U.S. does not bump up against the ceiling. But that, too, would be seen as an unacceptable political defeat and would additionally mean less money for the party of the Left to buy votes with voters’ money.
So, Democrats go for the third option, which is to demagogue the problem and accuse Republicans of playing with fire when they’re actually trying to throw a fire blanket over a blaze of spending.