Senator Obama vs President Obama on Debt Ceiling

Senator Obama vs President Obama on Debt Ceiling

President Barack Obama January 14, 2013 said he would be willing to take over authority for raising the U.S. borrowing limit if Congress does not want to increase the debt ceiling.  "This is about paying your bills," he said. "We've got to stop lurching from crisis to crisis to crisis."

But back when he was a Senator, and when our debt was just a fraction of what it currently is, Obama said:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

When CBS News White House correspondent Major Garrett asked Obama about this “new adamant desire on your part not to negotiate when that seems to conflict with the entire history in the modern era of American presidents in the debt ceiling and your own history on the debt ceiling”; not surprisingly, President Obama did not answer Garrett's question.