Over a decade ago, Mitch Daniels was the Bush/Cheney budget director, and was on “Meet the Press” when a debt-ceiling vote was coming up. Tim Russert asked what would happen. “We’re going to raise it, as a reasonable government must,” Daniels said. “This is really housekeeping, Tim. This has nothing to say or do with future spending. This simply reflects decisions made in the past, and it ought to be treated as the housekeeping matter it is.”
The quote lingers because of its political salience: a very conservative OMB chief was saying then what Democrats are saying now. And this morning, it happened again.
On CNBC this morning, Jim Nussle, the final Bush/Cheney budget chief, addressed debt-ceiling questions and caused quite a stir.
“There’ll be repercussions that our economy right now doesn’t need, doesn’t deserve at a time when it’s just trying to get back on its feet,” Nussle said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “The politicians in Washington are doing this for their own personal or political or ideological gain.” He added that the economy was on the verge of creating more jobs, but cautioned that “we can’t do that if there’s no certainty, if there’s no predictability, if people don’t believe in the future of our economy.” Remember, we’ve reached the point at which conservative Republicans from the Bush era look like liberals when compared to conservative Republicans currently in Congress.
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