Adele Ferguson: Debate of debt hike recalls H.W. Bush tax pact

SINCE THIS is written some days before it appears in print, I don’t know where we are in the battle over raising the debt limit, deadline for decision Aug. 2, but I pray that House Speaker John Boehner makes no deals with the president or Democrats unless the results are immediate, not promises.

Remember what happened to George “Read my lips, no new taxes” H.W. Bush? Democratic leaders came to Bush and promised that if he signed a tax increase they insisted was necessary, they would use any savings from military down sizing to bring down the federal deficit.

George H.W. Bush took them at their word. The tax increase passed. He signed it. The Democrats not only conveniently forgot what they had promised and pumped any savings into pork barrel earmarks for their members but spent the remainder of the time until the next election reminding the voters of that “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge. I seem to be the only person who remembers this and brings it up.

THE FACT of the deal was in the papers at the time it was made but rarely if at all thereafter although the liberal mainstream media brought up Bush’s broken promise like a broken record. I never could understand why Bush and the Republicans failed to bring this up every time the Democrats called him a liar for okaying a tax increase after promising not to. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. The Republicans were in the minority so long in Congress, they didn’t know how to behave like a majority.

At this writing, there are three potential deals in the works to resolve the current dead;ome if we are to meet obligations to the citizens and our debtors. The House has passed a bill, a Gang of Six Republican and Democratic senators have another and Senate leaders Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell are to be working on a third. I won’t go into the details that have come out on any of them because they won’t be the same by the time they negotiate something that will satisfy the Republican House, the Democratic Senate and the president who must sign it.

THE PRESIDENT promised to veto any short term debt limit deal to give the two sides more time to negotiate, but if that’s true, says the Wall Street Journal, the president isn’t serious. He is using the pressure of the Aug. 2 deadline to rush Boehner into a bad deal. Then the D’s can do what they did with Bush and tell everybody until the election in 2012 that Boehner was lying when he said no tax increases, just spending cuts.

I just hope that House Speaker John Boehner doesn’t fall into the same trap George H.W. Bush did. He signed the tax increase in return for later action on using military downsizing savings to lower the deficit. Later never came.

The Wall Street Journal says the only way Boehner can avoid being taken for a ride by this generation of Democrats is if all parts of any deal are negotiated, voted on and then implemented immediately. “Promises of future action aren’t credible.”

Does Obama lie? Well, he told us the Kennedy family paid for his Kenyan father to come to America on a student scholarship. The Kennedys said they did not.

He promised to read every line of every bill and allow five days of public comment before signing. When Obamacare was rushed through, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they had to pass it so they could read it . He said he would not negotiate behind closed doors but have the entire process. on C-Span “so you can see what your Congress is doing.”

Do you think we’re being let in on the negotiations? Neither do I.