When President Obama was in the Senate, when he was a U.S. senator, he voted against raising the debt ceiling. And he said it was a lack of leadership that had brought us to this point.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing's going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.
Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.
Debt ceiling is something that, you know, any time the president asks for the authority to increase the debt ceiling, the debt burden on our children and grandchildren, I think that requires a pretty serious discussion, robust debate.
It's disappointing that President Obama - who ran for office in 2008 saying he was going to be a fiscally responsible president - has caused the largest deficits and the largest debt in American history.
There was no avoiding the fact that we were going to hit our debt ceiling.
Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.
I think it's important that people know what raising the debt ceiling is. It's Congress giving permission to the federal government to borrow more money that we don't have, and we borrow it for the purpose of spending it.
The debt ceiling at some point has to be raised. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that if we ended up getting in a situation where the U.S. government was sending out IOUs like the state of California did at one point, that ends up creating quite a brand problem for our country.
The President didn't offer any clarity in his latest speech about what he would do to tackle our nation's debt before it tackles us and it's still not clear how he'll keep Medicare from going bankrupt. One thing is clear though, Barack Obama isn't interested in governing or putting forward solutions to fix our nation's problems.
No opposing quotes found.