A Host Of Dems Suddenly Backpedal On Debt Ceiling Votes

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer has joined President Obama in conceding that he blundered by voting against an increase to the government’s debt ceiling.

“I have voted against the debt limit in the past. That was a mistake,” Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking House Democrat, said in an unprompted admission to reporters on Tuesday.

His comment came two days after White House adviser David Plouffe said Obama made a mistake by voting against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator.

Democrats are urging Republicans not to jeopardize the economy and the full faith and credit of the nation with talk of voting against raising the $14 trillion debt ceiling before the borrowing limit is reached in July. But the Democrats' own votes against raising that ceiling during George W. Bush’s presidency are coming back to haunt them.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee attacked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who voted against raising the ceiling in 2007, for “flip-flopping” on the issue when she called Republicans “profoundly irresponsible” for threatening to do the same thing.

Hoyer said he voted with other Democrats against lifting the debt ceiling when Republicans were in the majority to protest what he said were irresponsible GOP fiscal policies, such as tax cuts for the wealthy.

In the Senate, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Reid has previously stated that he “believes he should have voted differently.”

Other Democratic senators stopped short of declaring their previous votes a mistake. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) voted against the debt-limit increase in 2006 “to demand a course correction from the Bush fiscal policies that had turned record budget surpluses into record deficits with no end in sight,” Kerry spokeswoman Whitney Smith said. “He'll cast this upcoming vote after considering the best way to influence our economic direction and after seeing what's attached to the bill.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) also defended his earlier vote.

“Sen. Lieberman stands by that vote because he believed the [Bush administration] failed to demonstrate that they were going to take serious steps to reduce the national debt which today threatens our economic future,” spokesman Jeremy Kilpatrick said. “The 2006 vote was the fourth time the debt ceiling was raised during the Bush administration.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) did not respond to requests for comment.

Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (S.C.) said through a spokeswoman: “My vote was in protest of Bush’s unwise and obscene tax cuts. The circumstances today are entirely different.”

Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling as an Illinois senator in 2006.

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