Obama points out that raising the debt ceiling does not, in itself, increase the national debt:
Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t increase the nation’s debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today. In a speech at the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington, D.C., Obama dismissed concerns about raising the debt ceiling by noting that it’d been done so many times in the past:
“Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress. It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”
Obama went on to suggest that “the average person” mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt: “It’s always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we’re running up our debt, so people don’t like to vote on it, and, typically, there’s some gamesmanship in terms of making the President’s party shoulder the burden of raising the — taking the vote.”
It’s true. Just like increasing your credit limit on your credit card doesn’t increase the amount of money you owe; you don’t owe more money until you go out and spend more. However, the fact that you are asking for a higher credit limit does, in most circumstances, indicate that you intend to spend more money than you presently can.
I’m going to miss the Obama administration. I knew it would be amusing and incompetent, but I had no idea he would take it to this level.