As recently as last August, congressional Republicans were still insisting that any increase in the federal government’s debt limit would have to be matched, dollar-for-dollar, by spending cuts. Indeed, Speaker John Boehner said the cuts should exceed the debt-limit increase.
This was an extreme position to take, risking U.S. default on its financial obligations. But the risk was worth it, the House GOP felt, because the federal deficit simply had to be brought under control. As Rep. Paul Ryan had said during the 2012 presidential campaign: “Of all the broken promises from President Obama, this is probably the worst one, because this debt is threatening jobs today, it’s threatening prosperity today, and it is guaranteeing that our children and grandchildren get a diminished future.”
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Then, in October, the House GOP decided no, what it really wanted was to kill off Obamacare by delaying its implementation one year. The scale was less ambitious, but the ideological message was the same: Republicans oppose big government.
When the government shutdown abruptly plunged Congress’s approval ratings into uncharted depths, the GOP started angling for smaller concessions. It wanted to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate. It wanted to eliminate Obamacare’s birth control coverage. It wanted to repeal the medical-device tax. In the end, it got essentially nothing.
Now the debt ceiling is expiring again and House Republicans don’t know what they want. According to Reuters, they would still like to do something “to reduce deficits or boost economic growth.” For Republicans, that never means anything except spending and tax cuts.
But the actual package they’re putting together includes neither. Instead, House Republicans are demanding that the debt-limit increase be tied to spending increases for military retirees and for physicians who treat Medicare patients. The pension cut was part of a bipartisan budget deal worked out a mere two months ago.









