From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:
“Reagan,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in 2002, “proved deficits don’t matter.” Unless, Cheney felt no need to mention, the occupant of the Oval Office is a Democrat. After all, Ronald Reagan had tripled the national debt in 8 short years and George W. Bush had nearly doubled it again by the time he ambled out of office on January 20, 2009.
But when Barack Obama took the oath of office during the worst American economic crisis since the Great Depression, Uncle Sam’s annual budget deficits and the cumulative national debt suddenly mattered to Republicans a great deal. After both parties had routinely raised the debt ceiling 40 times between 1980 and 2010, Congressional Republicans demanded draconian spending cuts as a condition of increasing the federal government’s ability to borrow more money for expenses it had already incurred.