In 2003 Nancy Pelosi was disgusted.  The Republican president inherited a slumping economy.  The events of 9/11 hammered the economy for 2002.  By May of 2003 Nancy Pelosi had had enough.  Totally ignoring the ramifications of 9/11, she laid all of the blame for the economy squarely on George Bush’s shoulders.  She’s so proud of that fact that she still has that speech on her web site.  I’m linking to it there.

“Ten years ago, faced with a struggling economy and a growing deficit, a new Congress and a new President courageously passed a budget bill that took us on a path to fiscal soundness. The stock markets responded, the economy prospered, and we had a record of economic growth that is unsurpassed in our nation’s history.

“We did that with Democratic votes only. Not one Republican was willing to step up to the plate for fiscal soundness and economic growth and job creation.

“At the end of the Clinton Administration, 22 million new jobs had been created, the country was on a path to a record surplus of $5.6 trillion, and the unemployment rate was at an all-time low. To achieve that, it took leadership and it took courage.

Wait, let’s go back just a minute, shall we?

For starters, Clinton didn’t inherit a slowing economy, he inherited an improving economy.  It wasn’t anything magical Clinton did.  The economy rebounded under his predecessor.  By the time Clinton was an experienced President, he lost the House.  The House is where the federal budget comes from.  For the rest of his tenure, it was mostly out of his hands.  The Republicans had to beat the daylights out of Clinton to get him to approve the budgets.  The showdowns led to several federal shutdowns.  Somehow or another, even with the Republicans in majority, Nancy Pelosi claims they did nothing to support Clinton’s economy.

She lied.  No one questioned her on that.

“What a difference two years make. President Bush and the Republicans in Congress have presided over the most dramatic deterioration in our economic health in our nation’s history.

“Since President Bush took office, we have gone from the strongest economy ever in the United States to a weak, struggling economy that was described by the Majority Leader just a moment ago. We have gone from historically low unemployment rates to losing 2.7 million jobs in the first two years of the President’s term. In fact, it’s 27 months, 2.7 million jobs- the worst record of job creation in nearly six decades.

Not one mention of the events of 9/11.  It’s as if it never happened.  That’s kinda lieing dontcha think?  Also:

That’s a chart on how much unemployment changed from year to year.  Clinton’s just not nearly what Pelosi is making him out to be.  Using her definition, George HW Bush was the best since he scored the most improvement years.  However, he had one really bad one.  Clinton did too.  For that matter, Clinton had a couple of historically bad years.  They were the years the Democrats wrote the budgets.  Coincidence?  That or Nancy is lieing.

“Under Republican leadership, April’s unemployment rate reached 6 percent, nearly 9 million Americans are out of work – the worst job slump since the Great Depression. Another 9 million Americans have either given up looking for work at all or are working part time.

“That’s why today is so tragic. Tragedy is about missed opportunities. We have an opportunity today to create jobs and build a strong economy without endangering our fiscal responsibility.

“Instead, the reckless tax plan the President and the Republicans in Congress have set forth is not only irresponsible in its substance, it is irresponsible in the bad example that the President and the White House has set. They created a feeding frenzy of tax cuts trying to outdo each other, making matters worse.

Something funny happened IMMEDIATELY after the Republicans passed their “feeding frenzy of tax cuts”:

The only year that saw a drop in Republican job creation was replaced by four straight years of steady job growth, as well as economic growth.  Things were looking pretty good.  Then in 2005, people listened to Nancy Pelosi and put the Democrats in charge of federal spending.  Job creation in 2005 and 2006 was fairly steady as the Democrats didn’t mess with the “feeding frenzy of tax cuts”.  But, in 2008 people put a Democrat in the White House.  As of 2009, the Democrats control it all.  Nancy Pelosi is basically in charge of it all now.  She started eliminating those economic disasters that she considered the tax breaks.  Spending has focused on government spending moreso than stimulus for private business.  In 2009 especially, the private sector was repeatedly vilified while the government sector was propped up with wildly out-of-control spending that promised to not lose as many jobs as would have been lost without it.  Net result?  This has been the worst year in history for jobs creation.  The general malaise of the late 70’s?  Nothing compared to 2009.  The economic recession that destroyed Bush I’s re-election efforts?  Nothing compared to this.  Nancy Pelosi and Obama constantly tell us it’s the economy they inherited.  They inherited from Nancy Pelosi.

And no one in media says a word about that.  Now, after seeing what the “feeding frenzy of tax cuts” did for the economy, versus eliminating those cuts and expanding the government has already done to our economy in the last three years, I read this today in The Wall Street Journal:

The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases.

Yes, 12.1%.

Remember, inflation is running close to zero, or 0.8%. The good news, if we can call it that, is that Senate Democrats only want to increase nondefense appropriations by 8% for 2010. Because these funding increases become part of the permanent baseline for future appropriations, the 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever.

These spending hikes do not include the so-called mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which exploded by 9.8% and 24.7%, respectively, in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year. All of this largesse is also on top of the stimulus funding that agencies received in 2009. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency rose 126%, the Department of Education budget 209% and energy programs 146%.

House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There’s no recession in Washington.

More broadly, the White House and the 111th Congress have already enacted or proposed $3.4 trillion of new spending through 2019 for things like the health-care plan, cap and tax, and the children’s health bill passed earlier this year. Very little of this has been financed with offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Throughout the era of Republican rule in Washington, we scored GOP lawmakers for their overspending and earmarks—and so did Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats. So how do their records compare? From 2001-2008 the average annual increase in appropriations bills came in at 6.4%—or about double the rate of inflation. In this Congress spending is now growing six times faster than inflation.

And here is the kicker. Mr. Obama’s 10-year budget forecast predicts that the budget deficit will fall in future years in part because federal spending on discretionary programs will grow at less than the rate of inflation. But spending is already up nearly 8% (including defense) in the first year alone.

For a laugh-out-loud moment on all of this, we recommend yesterday’s performance by New York Senator Chuck Schumer on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Mr. Schumer declared that “Barack Obama and we Democrats—this is counterintuitive but true—are really trying to get a handle on balancing the budget and we’re making real efforts to do it.” Counterintiutive? He said this four days after Senate Democrats lost a vote to add $250 billion to the deficit for doctor payments without any compensating spending cuts.

Democrats must figure that they can get away with this sort of rap because no one will call them on the reality of what they’re spending. And they’re probably right about a press corps that has ignored the spending boom since Democrats took over Congress in 2006. Meanwhile, the spending machine rolls on, all but guaranteeing monumental future tax increases.

Pelosi’s economic policies were built on lies.  They can’t even lie in a logical way about how this is supposed to help the economy.  Preventing losing jobs is NOT job creation.  Every penny they put in the government at the expense of the private sector reduces the GNP.  That’s where the tax revenues are, not the government.  By increasing spending and decreasing taxable revenue, you’ve got a disaster looming.  By having a feeding frenzy of uncontrolled spending by the Democrats, you’re just magnifying that disaster.  People think the last economic crash of 2008 was caused by Bush, that’s what CNN, MSNBC, and most of the rest along with Nancy Pelosi have told people, mostly unchallenged.  The fact is it was caused by a policy that skewed the free market.  It imposed the will of the government on the banking industry and forced it to accept loans that were not supportable via the Community Reinvestment Act.

Now, we’re being sold the same concept in the health care industry.  We’re being promised that the private sector won’t be hurt having to compete against the federal government.  That’s exactly what happened when the mortgage industry started having to compete with the “public option”, Fannie Mae.  Think about it.  In the meantime, the economy continues to tank.