GOP’s Ryan Budget Would Add Up to $6 Trillion to Debt – And Yet GOP Won’t Raise Debt Limit?

In what Democrats called a political stunt, House Republicans voted in lockstep to oppose raising the U.S. debt ceiling last night.

Republican have done a masterful spin job on the debt-ceiling issue. Polls show that a majority of Americans say they oppose raising it, but it appears they have reached this conclusion based on misperception of the facts.

For one thing, raising the debt limit has nothing to do with future spending. It covers the indebtedness incurred in the current budget, the same budget that Congress — including the Republicans in the House — voted for.

That’s right. Republicans voted to raise the national debt a few months ago, now these same Republicans are demanding that the U.S. Treasury welch on the debt they charged to the national credit card.

Worse, not only have Republicans snookered the public into believe that raising the debt ceiling is tied to future spending, the GOP’s own budget for future spending — the budget bill that includes the the Ryan “Kill Medicare” proposal, the budget that Republicans in the House and Senate vote for — would raise the national debt by as much as $6 trillion.

Matt Miller, the “radical centrist” host of KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center,” calls them on it:

The new GOP mantra is to define what the president must agree to in spending cuts to get the debt-limit increase “he has asked for.”

You see the sly innuendo? It’s apparently just the president who wants to add more debt. Republicans were just sitting there, minding their own business, and the guy just comes up and asks if he can borrow trillions more!

“As you know,” John Boehner told the Economic Club of New York Monday night, “the president has asked Congress to increase the debt limit.”

“If Mr. Obama wants a big increase in the debt limit,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page echoed Tuesday, “he’ll just have to engage on reforming the big entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and perhaps even Social Security.”

Where to begin?

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has just passed Paul Ryan’s fiscal plan, which would add between $5 trillion and $6 trillion to the national debt in the next decade.

That’s more debt than has ever been incurred in any 10-year period in our history

And, yes, the vote last night was just a big stunt:

The preordained outcome followed several acts of odd political theater on the House floor: Republicans urged the defeat of their own measure, while Democrats — who not long ago were seeking just such a vote to raise the debt ceiling without attaching spending cuts — assailed Republicans for bringing it up, saying its certain defeat might unnerve the financial markets.

Just in case, Republican leaders scheduled the vote for after the stock market’s close, and in the preceding days called Wall Street executives to assure them that the vote was just for show, to show Mr. Obama that he would have to make concessions in budget negotiations if a debt-limit increase is to pass Congress.

“This vote, based on legislation I’ve introduced, will and must fail,” said Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, objected. “This is a political stunt,” he said.

Matt Miller has a suggestion for Pres. Obama. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When the president sits down with senators of both parties this week in separate White House powwows on the debt, his position should be this: ‘Let’s just increase the debt limit by the amount of debt it would take to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget in the next decade. We can fight about the details later. No spooking the markets over this insanity.’

“Even a debauched democracy like the United States can aim for minimal standards of rationality in public debate. It’s the adult thing to do. “

Connect: