Harry Reid Happy to Play Politics With the Debt Limit When the Other Party Is In Charge
In the debt limit debate, Democratic leadership has spent a lot of time complaining about Republicans being intransigent, refusing to work together, and playing politics rather than working toward solutions. Of course, as Byron York notes, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid's vote record on previous debt limit hikes suggests that, historically, that's exactly how he's treated debt limit battles too:
According to "The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases," a January 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service, the Senate has passed ten increases to the debt limit since 2000. Reid never voted to increase the debt ceiling when Republicans were in control of the Senate, and he always voted to increase the debt ceiling when Democrats were in control.
He's not the only one. York reports that Sen. Dick Durbin, Senate Democrats' second in command, has an equally partisan vote record, always voting against his opponents in the GOP. And then there's Obama, who, as Senator, declared that his predecessor's request to raise the debt limit represented a "failure of leadership"—and then voted against it.
