Congressional partisanship: deja vu all over again?

• Author: Roberts, Tyler
• Position: WASHINGTON BEAT

Legislative deadlock is rampant as both sides vie for the public's support while at the same time the federal government is engulfed in massive amounts of debt. The United States is facing the most partisan Congress in recent memory. Or is it? The year is 2011. Or is it 1995, 1962, 1957, or even as far back as 1786?

With a temporary solution to America's debt-ceiling crisis signed into law by President Barack Obama on Aug. 2, countless polls show the American appetite for partisan squabbles is at its lowest level in history. Yet this scene has played out several times in our history. Take a breath, America. This is nothing new.

In actuality, debt crises are as large a part of the nation's makeup as baseball and apple pie. There have been countless examples in the 235-year history of the U.S. that mimic many of the crises making the headlines in newspapers and on Internet sites today. Though the amounts of debt have increased dramatically over the years, the general concept is the same--some things never change.

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF

In 1786, the U.S. faced a dilemma: what to do with the massive debt from the Revolutionary War? Elected representatives at the time did not favor big government. In order to combat this, America's leaders drafted the Articles of Confederation. In short, the federal government could not raise taxes, so states raised taxes to the highest levels ever seen in the new republic.

In states like Massachusetts, bankers foreclosed on farmers' homes and placed those with debts into prison. Aside from the debtors' prisons, this sounds eerily like the last few years in the U.S.

The result? Daniel Shays--a Revolutionary War hero who returned from the front to find his farm being foreclosed on--started a private army to fight the courts. In the end, many of Shays' followers were hanged, but the situation highlighted a key struggle that still rages on in the 21st century: a strong federal government versus more power to the states.

Since the 1950s, every president has had to deal with a debt-limit increase. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower ran as a fiscal conservative, but wanted to spend money on costly infrastructure projects such as the highway system. He pushed for a debt ceiling increase of $15 billion, but met opposition from his own party. Congress granted a $6 billion temporary increase in order to send a message that it understood fiscal restraint.

In 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy was fighting...