Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was a special assistant for domestic affairs to President Lyndon B. Johnson, is the founder and chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia.
THIS week House Republicans overwhelmingly rejected a plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling without simultaneous cuts in taxes and spending, setting up a showdown with President Obama this summer over the budget.
Mr. Obama is not the first president to confront the Cerberus of debt limits, taxes and spending cuts. Indeed, Lyndon B. Johnson’s struggle in 1967 and 1968 to raise the debt ceiling, ward off draconian spending cuts and raise taxes offers important lessons for Mr. Obama.
The first problem for Johnson was how much the government could go into debt. Because of increased domestic spending and the war in Vietnam, the deficit grew rapidly during the 1960s, and in 1967 we on the White House staff asked Congress to raise the country’s debt ceiling.
It wasn’t the first such request; before 1967 raising the limit had been routine, supported in the Senate by almost all Democrats and liberal Republicans. Even in the House, where members faced re-election every other year and thus largely opposed such measures, we believed a favorable vote was inevitable....
