Obama Maxes Out Our Credit Card

File this under galling hypocrisy. Barack Obama has spent our nation so far into debt, Congress is rushing to raise the national debt ceiling. Right now the government is legally barred from accruing a debt greater than $12 trillion. With his enormous spending spree underway, Obama is slated to exceed that debt. If Congress doesn't either cut spending or increase the debt ceiling by $1 trillion or so, the government could go broke and lose its triple-A credit status.

You didn't think the profligate Barack Obama was going to cut spending, did you?

But the president hasn't always been so reckless with the country's finances. Back in 2006, President Bush asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling, primarily to finance the continuing military escalation in Iraq. With righteous indignation, an outraged Senator Obama took to the floor. "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," he railed. "America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership." Although domestic spending increased between 2001 and 2008, Bush's government debt was spent primarily fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama is more than willing to mortgage America's future in order to bring one-sixth of the American economy under federal control with his health care bill, or to give the likes of the AARP and La Raza kickbacks with the stimulus. But accruing debt to fight for national security? That's just irresponsible.

Obama later voted "no" on the debt ceiling increase along with his fellow Democrats.

This is stunning hypocrisy, but it also has a large silver lining. Obama is trying to force feed his health care bill through the Senate in December, the same month in which the debt ceiling must be raised to prevent financial hell from breaking loose. A coalition of Republican and moderate Democrat senators, led by Dianne Feinstein of California, are drawing a line in the sand, demanding that Obama submit budget cuts before they'll vote to raise the debt ceiling. If more liberal Democrats protest this (which they likely will), there could be a contentious battle on the Senate floor which could drag on for days. This would take up a good deal of the precious time that Harry Reid needs to steer ObamaCare through before the Senate adjourns for Christmas break.

Will Obama's big spending come back to bite him this month? It seems almost too good to be true.