Cline wants Biden to ‘come to the table’ on debt ceiling: Did he demand the same of Trump?

Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling three times during Donald Trump’s presidency, as the Trump administration ran up the national debt by nearly $8 trillion.

But now supposedly conservative Republicans like Ben Cline who had no problem with the Trump team’s profligate spending suddenly want to rein things in.

“The president is refusing to negotiate,” Cline said at a meeting with constituents in Staunton on Tuesday. “It is in his best interests to negotiate and come to the table.”

There was no such sentiment from Cline on any of the three votes to raise the debt ceiling in the Trump years.

Republicans didn’t demand that Trump come to the table to negotiate.

They didn’t threaten default; they didn’t demand spending cuts.

It’s pure politics – pure, dumb politics, as you can tell from Cline’s dumb statement last week on the House Republican debt-ceiling bill.

“President Biden and the Deficit-Loving D.C. Democrats’ inflationary spending has worked to increase our national debt to unsustainable levels – $31.6 trillion in debt and an annual deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion,” Cline said.

What he’s not saying there: Trump’s last two budgets, in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, ran at deficits of $3.13 trillion and $2.77 trillion, and more than a quarter of our 234-year-old nation’s debt came from Trump’s single four-year term as president.

More from Cline’s statement last week:

“While Biden has no plan to avoid debt default, House Republicans are committed to a reasonable, responsible, and sensible solution to our nation’s debt crisis that would limit Washington’s irresponsible spending, save taxpayer dollars, and grow the American economy. It’s time Democrats finally do their job and come to the negotiating table.”

Where was this Ben Cline when he was letting Donald Trump spend money like a drunken sailor while giving his millionaire and billionaire buddies trillions of dollars in tax breaks that they didn’t need?

That’s a rhetorical question.

It’s only “inflationary spending” and a “debt crisis” when the other side wins the election.