"With time running out on a looming debt crisis, the president and his allies in the Senate are fighting to win a raise in the government’s borrowing limit, only to be stymied by a minority insisting that a spending freeze be part of the deal.
Sounds like present day, but it was October 1984 — when the partisan roles were reversed. Republicans controlled the White House and theSenate, while Democrats controlled the House. Democrats also could sustain filibusters in the Senate and were balking at raising the debt ceiling unless it was attached to big spending cuts
That year, Democrats defeated a debt-limit increase by voting it down in the Senate and forcing Republican leaders to send Air Force planes — at a cost of more than $4,000 in taxpayer money — to collect absent senators and rush them back to Washington for a revote that ultimately passed.
One of the leaders of that 1984 Democratic revolt — a man who tried to impose a spending freeze and fought for a smaller debt increase than President Reagan wanted — was none other than current Vice President Joseph R. Biden, then a senator from Delaware and now PresidentObama’s right-hand man in negotiations with Congress"...............READ MORE
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