Democrats railing against Senate Republicans for withholding votes from a debt ceiling increase have done the same in the past under GOP rule, raising charges of hypocrisy from the Right.
President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have taken aim at Republicans over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s insistence since July that Democrats, in control of all three branches of government, extend the country’s borrowing limit on their own.
While he agreed to a bipartisan deal that would raise the debt ceiling through Dec. 3, McConnell has maintained Democrats should handle the issue along party lines, arguing they plan to use the procedure to pass bills by a simple majority for legislation far more sweeping than a debt limit increase.
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Biden this week cast the Republican approach as an unprecedented act of obstruction.
“Raising the debt limit is usually a bipartisan undertaking,” Biden said in a speech on Monday. “And it should be.”
Biden described Republican actions as “hypocritical, dangerous, and disgraceful.”
But as a longtime U.S. senator, Biden repeatedly voted against raising the debt ceiling — along with other Senate Democrats who, like McConnell is saying now, demanded Republicans bear the burden of extending the country’s borrowing capability.
When he did so in 2006, Biden blamed Republican policymaking for his decision to vote against the increase.
“My vote against the debt limit increase cannot change the fact that we have incurred this debt already and will no doubt incur more,” Biden said in 2006. “It is a statement that I refuse to be associated with the policies that brought us to this point.”
In 2004, when Democrats again voted almost unanimously against raising the debt limit, Biden was at a funeral and did not vote. However, he released a statement saying he would have voted “no” if he had been present on Capitol Hill.
“Had I been here to vote, Mr. President, I would have cast a symbolic vote against an extension of the debt limit,” Biden said. “Today’s fiscal mess, the transformation of historic surpluses into record deficits, is not an accident. It is the inevitable outcome of policies that consistently ignored evidence and experience.”
Schumer has railed against Senate Republicans in recent days over the debt ceiling standoff, accusing the GOP of “playing political games” with the country’s economic future.
But Schumer had also voted against the debt ceiling increase when Republicans were in charge. He did so in 2003, 2004, and 2006.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is another current Senate Democrat outspoken about Republicans withholding their votes from the latest debt limit increase.
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In a speech on the Senate floor on Monday, Durbin lamented that “the Senate Republican leader has made it clear he isn’t giving us a vote, not one.”
He blamed Republicans for bringing the process “to a standstill.”
But Durbin joined Democrats in 2003, 2004, and 2006 in forcing Republicans to lift the debt limit increase almost entirely on their own.
