Don't Fool Yourself: GOP Very Capable of Raising the Debt Ceiling

The new GOP House of Representatives will soon show their true colors. In the coming weeks, we will know whether or not they are truly looking to cut the national debt or if they are willing to make room to acquire more debt. I tend to think when all is said and done, they will vote to increase the debt ceiling. Why, because in the last ten years, they four out of the last ten debt ceiling increases were at the hands of a Republican Congress.

National Reveiw has published the following chart. If you see a square, that means the debt ceiling increased during that year. If you see a triangle it increased twice. That's ten debt ceiling increases in the last ten years. That's unacceptable, and the GOP's hands are dirty. DECEPTICONS, I'm telling you!

The National Review writes:

When it was instituted over 70 years ago, the statutory debt limit was intended to control congressional spending by limiting the amount of debt that the federal government could accumulate. Clearly, it has not fulfilled its legislative purpose. In the last ten years, Congress has increased the debt limit ten times, raising the limit twice annually in 2008 and 2009. This data provides evidence that the debt limit, far from providing its intended fiscal discipline, has recently served as a symbolic cap that Congress will simply push higher and higher as spending increases dictate.