Midwest Voices

Barb Shelly

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U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts ended up in the “debits” feature of the Concord Coalition’s latest “Washington Report.”

The folks at the coalition, which advocates for deficit-reduction, were amused by the Kansas Republican’s explanation for why he may not support an increase in the debt ceiling, after he voted to do so five times while George W. Bush was president.

Said Roberts: “We really made an effort to get the debt down” in the Bush years.

To that the coalition noted dryly: “Should have tried harder.”

As the coalition noted, a new Washington Post analysis of Congressional Budget Office data determined that policies from Bush’s eight years in office added more than $7 trillion to the debt. The Obama administration’s policies so far have added $1.7 trillion.

Roberts himself voted for the biggest budget-busters of the Bush era: Tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the prescription drug benefit.

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