What Democrats did wrong on the debt ceiling in 2010

Ezra Klein puts it all in perspective, What Democrats did wrong on the debt ceiling in 2010

"But there was a moment when Democrats did have the leverage: December 2010. The election was over. Nancy Pelosi was still speaker of the House. Harry Reid still had 59 Democrats in the Senate. The Bush tax cuts were expiring. And Democrats had a perfectly popular and intuitive position: Extend the cuts for the middle class but, in a time of deficits and sacrifice, sunset the cuts for the rich.

Republicans, of course, didn’t want to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire. They were, in fact, desperate to preserve them. Which meant Democrats had the leverage. And they used it. To secure a temporary extension, Republicans had to accept a substantial round of additional stimulus: A one-year payroll tax cut, an extension of unemployment insurance, and a handful of sundry other stimulus measures. And the extension only lasted for two years, so the White House preserved the option of coming back and killing off the tax cuts after the 2012 election.

But there was one thing the deal didn’t include, that many observers -- myself included -- said should have been there: an increase in the debt ceiling."