Thirty years of the debt ceiling in one graph

By Ezra Klein

Nice graphic by the visual whizzes at The Post:

(THE WASHINGTON POST)

The one caveat to this graph is that the colors on the bar showing control of the House of Representatives look to be reversed. But that doesn’t distract from its main point: “Since 1980, the debt ceiling has been raised 39 times. It was raised 17 times under Ronald Reagan, four times under Bill Clinton and seven times under George W. Bush.”

At any given time, the minority party likes to pretend that the debt is all the majority party’s fault. That’s the whole theory behind the McConnell plan. But every president and congress is paying for the decisions of every previous president and congress. This is, and always has been, a bipartisan affair.

By Ezra Klein  |  11:39 AM ET, 07/15/2011