It figures. Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats tripled the national deficit in one year. They will likely top that this year.
Today Nancy Pelosi tried to pin these awful numbers on the GOP.
The Hill reported:
House Democratic leaders said a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) showing a $1.35 trillion deficit in 2010 was the result of policies put in place by President George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress, who controlled the House and Senate until the 2006 elections.
“Today’s CBO report is a clear reminder of the Bush and Republican Congress-era policies that have resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, led to the worst recession since the Great Depression, and turned record surpluses under the Clinton Administration into record deficits,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
The CBO report also predicted a “muted” economic recovery in the coming years, which Democrats in the House and Senate hope to address through a new spending bill focused on job growth in the coming weeks.
“90 percent of the projected deficit is due to the cost of the Bush economic collapse and Bush policies like his unpaid for tax cuts for the wealthy,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.), the fourth-ranking member of the House. “The devastating fiscal hole he left us in was far worse than anyone could have imagined.”
For the record, during the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth. These were amazing accomplishments considering the unexpected challenges. You certainly didn’t read much about this in the press.
But, things changed in 2007. Democrats took over Congress, gas prices started to rise, and at the end of the year and into 2008 several financial institutions started to crumble as the housing bubble began to burst. Of course, it should be noted that President Bush publicly called for the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Democrats, on the other hand, blocked reform numerous times. It was later reported after the 2008 election that Bush had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell wrote in Barron’s in February of 2009 that the present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. This risk was acknowledged in the Bush administration’s first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. Sadly these warnings were ignored by Congress.
Nancy Pelosi is hoping that you will not remember these facts.
She is a shameless liar.