Have cake, eat it, too!
U.S. Sen. Dean Heller is certainly glad the debt ceiling was raised.
But not glad enough to have voted for it.
Heller was the only member of Nevada's congressional delegation to vote against the 11th-hour deal reached to increase the nation's borrowing capacity by $2.4 trillion. After the vote, his news release announced "Heller votes against largest debt increase in history."
So why then would Heller declare -- in a Tuesday interview on "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" -- that he "salutes" the fact the debt-limit was increased? "The good news is we did raise the debt ceiling," Heller said in that interview.
It's good news? If it's so good, why didn't Heller vote for it?
After all, Rep. Shelley Berkley -- running against Heller for Senate in 2012 -- voted reluctantly for the debt-limit increase after saying a vote against the bill was "a vote for a devastating default that would lead to a financial collapse that kills thousands of jobs, denies seniors Social Security checks, denies pay to our active duty military and eliminates benefits for veterans."
Rep. Joe Heck, Heller's fellow Republican, agreed the consequences of voting no would be dire. "While I prefer that we didn't need to raise our debt limit, prior Congresses ran up these bills and they need to be paid or we risk a decrease in our nation's AAA credit rating," Heck said in a video message released after his yes vote. That decrease would raise interest rates for everybody at a particularly bad time, he added.
Heller, however, voted no, obviously knowing the bill would pass the Senate without his support. Thus, he can now campaign against Berkley for having voted for the " largest debt increase in history" while at the same time safe in the knowledge the dire consequences of voting no were averted because other lawmakers stood up to do the right thing.
Is there not some cake-having and cake-eating going on?
In his defense, Heller's spokesman notes the senator voted for two separate increases in the debt ceiling, first in the "cut, cap and balance" approach that would also have limited federal spending, and again in the less ambitious plan advanced by House Speaker John Boehner. It's not that Heller was flatly against a debt-ceiling increase, like many in the tea party movement. It's that the final deal didn't meet with his approval.
And it's not as if the advocates for debt-ceiling increases -- from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, to Berkley to President Barack Obama himself -- haven't voted against raising the debt ceiling themselves in the past. If there were dire consequences to previous "no" votes on the matter, wouldn't those consequences also attach to previous debt-limit votes? Of course they must.
Then again, Heller has compromised before. As a member of the House last year, he faced a tough vote on the extension of unemployment benefits. Heller preferred to use unspent stimulus money to pay for keeping jobless benefits flowing, and tried hard to get his approach into law. After his idea was shot down, he could have taken a hard line and voted no; instead, he voted yes.
"While I believe that this legislation should have been paid for, I cannot vote against the unemployment extension when so many Nevadans are struggling to get by," Heller said.
But this time, when his preferred approaches -- a "grand deal" that would have cut $4 trillion from future deficits, the cut, cap and balance bill and the Boehner plan -- were rejected, Heller didn't act to avoid the pain that could have resulted to many Nevadans who are still struggling to get by.
"I just don't think this bill was good enough," Heller told Ralston on Tuesday.
Perhaps not. But is it just coincidence that Heller's consequence-free vote was also the most politically advantageous?
Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.
