After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” 
 
 Now, the Republican Party is doing the same thing to him — and Democrats are happy to take Reagan back. 
 
 At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the House Democrats, caucus chairman John Larson rallied his colleagues for the day’s debt-limit debate by playing an audio recording of the 40th president. 
 
 “Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan says in the clip. “This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.” 
 
 “Kind of sums things up,” Larson said, playing the same clip again at a news conference. 
 
 Nobody knows what Reagan, who died in 2004, would make of the current fight over the debt limit. But 100 years after Reagan’s birth, it’s clear that the Tea Party Republicans have little regard for the policies of the president they claim to venerate. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times. 
 
 Tea Party Republicans, in “cut, cap and balance” legislation on the House floor Tuesday, voted to cut government spending permanently to 18 percent of gross domestic product; under Reagan, spending was as high as 23.5 percent and never below 21.3 percent of GDP. 
 
 That same legislation would take federal spending down to a level last seen in 1966, before Medicare was fully up and running; Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare. 
 
 Under the Tea Party Republicans’ spending cap, Reagan’s military buildup, often credited with winning the Cold War, would have been impossible. 
 
 No wonder Democrats on Tuesday were claiming the Republican icon as one of their own. After the caucus meeting with the Reagan clip, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) began the day’s debate by reading from a 1983 Reagan letter to Congress warning that “the full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate.” 
 
 “In the year of his 100th birthday, the Great Communicator might be amazed at how far his own image has shifted from the original,” Quigley charged. “He’d see his most dedicated followers using his name as justification for saying no to honoring our debts. He’d see his legacy used to play chicken with the world’s greatest economic engine.” 
 
 Republicans have continued their ritual praise of Reagan during the debt-limit fight. Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) claimed that the budget caps would allow America to be “that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of.” Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) invoked Reagan’s belief that “the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a federal government program.”Kevin Brady (Tex.) cited Reagan’s line that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” Both Steve King (Iowa) and Bobby Schilling (Ill.) informed the body that they had granddaughters named Reagan. 
 
 But while Reagan nostalgia endures, a number of Republicans have begun to admit the obvious: The Gipper would no longer be welcome on the GOP team. Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.” This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.” 
 
 During the debt-limit debate, a procession of Democrats — Vermont’s Peter Welch, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, New York’s Paul Tonko, Texas’s Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green — claimed Reagan’s support for their position. Reagan is “revered by many Democrats,” said Welch, who praised Reagan for fighting “the absurd notion that America had an option when it came to paying our bills.” 
 
 Half a century after he left the party, the Gipper is winning one for the Democrats. 
 
 danamilbank@washpost.com ||||| Ronald Reagan argued that consequences of a debt default would be devastating to the United States. | AP 
 
 WASHINGTON -- Democrats have a new icon these days: Ronald Reagan. 
 
 That's because, unlike many Republicans in the House, the fiscally conservative late president believed it was essential for the United States to make good on its all obligations and raise the debt ceiling. 
 
 And Democrats across the spectrum on Wednesday have been holding the conservative hero up to Republicans as an example they should follow. 
 
 "I find myself these days quoting Ronald Reagan," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a news conference Wednesday. "'The full consequences of a default,' he said, 'or even the serious prospect of a default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The nation can ill afford to allow such a result.' 
 
 "That's Ronald Reagan," Boxer emphasized, suggesting that Republicans recall that model. "All they have to do is look at their icon, Ronald Reagan, and understand you don't play with fire when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States of America." 
 
 She was far from alone. 
 
 Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to all the Republican members of the House to remind them of the Gipper's feelings as expressed in a 1983 letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) -- the same letter Boxer quoted. 
 
 "President Reagan was a staunch conservative whose views sharply differ from Progressives’ in nearly every respect," wrote the CPC members to Republicans. "Yet, Reagan understood that the American people have invested their trust in our ability to be wise stewards." 
 
 "We hope you will take President Reagan’s message to heart and put what’s best for America’s economy ahead of gaining a short-term political advantage," they added. "Let’s not hold the jobs and economic security of the American people hostage to an agenda that will only cause long-term harm to our great nation." 
 
 Baker himself has come out in favor of lifting the nation's spending cap before it is reached on Aug. 2. 
 
 The Senate Democratic message shop took a sneakier approach, blasting out an e-mail headlined with a paraphrase of the famous Reaganism. "There they go again," it said. "GOP Lawmakers ignoring Reagan, still downplay consequences of a default." 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the debt ceiling must be raised, but he has also stuck to the postion of his caucus that it cannot be raised with out major cuts. His spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ||||| President Barack Obama and the two top House Republican leaders held an unannounced meeting at the White House Sunday, trying to get debt talks back on track with just two weeks left before the threat of default. 
 
 Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were both part of the discussions which come even as the House GOP has scheduled floor votes Tuesday on a newly revised debt ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date and represents a real shift to the right. 
 
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 Boehner’s office confirmed the meeting to POLITICO Monday but said that the goal was to keep lines of communication open, not to change the legislative plan for this week. 
 
 “As we said throughout the weekend, the lines of communications are being kept open,” said Kevin Smith. “But there is nothing to report in terms of an agreement or progress. We believe cut, cap and balance represents the best path forward, and we are looking forward to the House vote on it tomorrow.” 
 
 Obama clearly disagrees, and the administration said flatly Monday that the president would veto the House bill –regardless of the debt ceiling impact—if the measure should ever reach his desk 
 
 Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s. 
 
 Indeed, much of the deficit-reduction legislation signed by Reagan would not qualify under the new tea-party-driven standards. And even the famed Reagan-Tip O’Neill Social Security compromise — which raised payroll taxes — passed the House in 1983 well short of the 290 votes that would be required under the constitutional amendments being promoted by the GOP. 
 
 Dubbed Cut, Cap and Balance, the House bill allows for a $2.4 trillion increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority but effectively uses the Aug. 2 deadline as a Republican anvil on which to hammer out cuts President Barack Obama would otherwise veto. 
 
 On the Sunday talk shows, proponents praised the initiative as a “common-sense” and “real deal” framework for final negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats. 
 
 “At least we will have demonstrated we can pass legislation to deal with the debt ceiling and put the onus on the Senate to act,” Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) told POLITICO. But in a blistering statement, Robert Greenstein, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the bill “stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.” 
 
 Statutory caps would drive spending down to 19.9 percent of gross domestic product by 2021 — a $1 trillion difference with Obama in that year alone. At the same time, Pentagon appropriations are assumed to grow even as Supplemental Security Income payments for the elderly and the disabled would be exposed to future sequesters to enforce the caps.
– The Democrats, the party that Ronald Reagan ditched in 1962, says that even the Gipper would be on their side in today's debt ceiling debate. Dems are telling Republicans they should follow Reagan's lead in fiscal responsibility, circulating a 1987 radio address in which Reagan slammed brinksmanship and stressed that the US had a "special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations," the Huffington Post reports. Reagan—who presided over 11 tax hikes and 18 increases in the debt ceiling—probably wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP, writes Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. While most Republicans continue praising Reagan, he notes that a few have admitted that he wouldn't be able to win the nomination in the current atmosphere. Steve Kornacki at Salon, however, believes that the Democrats are overplaying the Reagan card. If the Gipper were around today, he'd be siding with House Republicans and "finding some way to rationalize away his past statements," he writes.