During the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, John Kasich cautioned against shutting down the government to defund Planned Parenthood because, eventually, they are "gonna open it up and the American people are gonna shake their heads."
But as an Ohio Congressman in 1995, Kasich championed a government shutdown, a stand he has called "one of the greatest moments of my career."
"When it comes to closing down the federal government, we've got to be very careful about that," Kasich said Wednesday. "When we shut the government down—if we have a chance of success and it's a great principle, yes, but the president of the United States is not gonna sign this. And all we're gonna do is shut the government down and then we're gonna open it up and the American people are gonna shake their heads and say, what's the story with these Republicans?"
Kasich went on to invoke his time in Congress, boasting of his accomplishments, including a balanced budget, claiming "there are ways to do it without having to shut the government down."
"I was in the Congress for 18 years, balanced the budget, cut taxes, got it done, changed welfare, went around the president to get welfare reform done," he said. "But there are ways to do it without having to shut the government down. But I'm sympathetic to the fact that we don't want this organization to get funding and the money oughta be reprogrammed for family planning in other organizations that don't support this tactic, but I would not be for shutting the government down."
However, in his 2006 book Stand for Something, Kasich called the balanced budget "a direct result" of the 1995 government shutdown.
"For this one battle, for the time being, we forgot about politics and focused on good government, and if we had to take a beating for it, then so be it," he wrote. "And as a direct result of that government shutdown in 1995, we wrote a bill that provided for the first balanced budget in nearly forty years and allowed us to pay down the largest chunk of our staggering national debt in the history of this country."
In the book, he cast the shutdown as a rare example of politicians setting aside "opinion polls and reelection concerns", for the sake of "our children," "our shared future" and "for America."
"Today, with perspective, pundits look back and suggest that shutting down the government under those circumstances was dumb, but I look back and think it was one of the greatest moments of my career," he argued. "Why? Well, typically politicians make their decisions based on votes. They'll side this way or that way on an issue according to public opinion polls and reelection concerns. And yet in at least this one instance politicians set aside these concerns and stood up for what was right. For our children. For our shared future. For America."