President Obama used the last press conference of his first term today to continue attacking Republicans for even thinking about using the debt ceiling as leverage to force him to accept spending cuts. Over and over again, the president said he wouldn’t discuss whether the debt ceiling would be raised since it was simply a matter of Congress having to pay the country’s bills. Assuming the tone of a parent trying to instruct an unruly child in proper conduct, he likened it to going out to dinner and then deciding not to pay the bill, and declared it to be an unprecedented act of irresponsibility. But at least one member of the White House press corps wasn’t willing to let him get away with this line.
CBS News’s Major Garrett had the chutzpah to ask how the president’s denunciations of Republican threats not to raise the debt ceiling squared with his own votes while a U.S. senator. Senator Barack Obama voted several times not to raise the debt ceiling as part of a Democratic protest against the profligate spending of the George W. Bush administration. Yet when he was called out for this apparent contradiction, the president refused to be deterred. He simply ignored the point of the question, making it apparent that he was not going to let the facts interfere with his talking points. But the discrepancy between his record and the high-handed manner with which the president has continually sought to tar Republicans as extremists goes straight to the heart of the debate on the issue.
