Posts in "Nancy Pelosi"

jasoncockrell's picture
By Jason Cockrell at 2:07PM

'Chicken Little' Obama flip-flops on debt ceiling

President Flip-FlopJust recently I wrote about Nancy Pelosi's odd view that continuously increasing government debt is a necessary precondition to functioning American businesses. Now President Obama is one-upping her, warning of economic armageddon if the debt ceiling is not raised, though like Pelosi he gives no explanation of why he thinks government powers the private sector instead of the reverse. In the face of such blatant hyperbole and scare tactics, the most appropriate response is simply to laugh.

Yet it stands as a grave and sobering moment for those who remember the year 2006, when then-Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling and famously said, "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally." At that time the proposed debt ceiling was about five trillion dollars lower than the current federal debt, and President Obama wants to see it raised again.


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jasoncockrell's picture
By Jason Cockrell at 11:01AM

On Pelosi's faith in government as an economic engine

House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Thursday that Republicans in Congress may hold out on raising the federal debt limit until a severe downturn in the markets wakes them up. "The Republicans may need to see the markets drop 400 points," she said, and "[the markets] should encourage Republicans to raise the debt ceiling."

This way of framing the issue speaks volumes about Pelosi's concept of how an economy functions. She may well be correct that a market downturn would spur Republicans to compromise their position on the debt ceiling, as they are certainly known for caving under pressure. But what remains to be understood is precisely why Pelosi believes that American businesses rely on the government continuously going deeper and deeper into debt in order to function. She does not explain for our benefit what connection exists between capping the government's debt and spurring a dramatic market downturn.

The truth is that most businesses in America earn their profits by producing goods and services that people want to buy because it benefits every party involved. For the minority of businesses that really do depend upon continuous government spending as their core economic engine, it's unclear why anyone outside of narrow special interests should want these companies to survive. Surely the execs of the Citigroups and AIGs of the world have already gotten plenty of taxpayer money through the controversial TARP bill. The taxpayers needn't shoulder the burden of more bad business decisions.

An economy of businesses dependent upon government handouts isn't sustainable. Any companies that can't stand on their own two feet should be allowed to fail.

Nick Davies's picture
By Nicholas Davies at 12:27PM
Jihan Huq's picture
By Jihan Huq at 8:09PM

Pelosi (after Almost a Year and a Half) Finally Defies Obama

npElection season is almost here. She's talking the talk again.

After a year and a half of Barack Obama in office, Nancy Pelosi finally defies Obama (I smell a rat). On Thursday, Speaker Pelosi dared to defy a veto threat by President Obama on war spending in Afghanistan. Her amendment would have required the president to provide Congress a new intelligence report on Afghanistan by January and a plan to start bringing the troops home sometime by July 2011.


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Jihan Huq's picture
By Jihan Huq at 6:58PM

Nearly Four Million Citizens to Pay Health Insurance Penalty By 2016

np

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein

No, I am not shocked as I know you are not either. However, what does enrage me is that all the ignoramuses that claimed this fascist health care plan would be a descending gift from the heavens REFUSED to read the actual bill.  However, let us look at the picture from a broader perspective:  Who is really to blame for this bill?  Obviously the already dying Republican Party and, more specifically, Mitt Romney. In fact, it was the "limited government, low spending, pro civil liberties" GOP that was responsible for proposing something similar in the 90s.  No wonder their objections this time around were too little, too late.


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Preston Mui's picture
By Preston Mui at 7:08AM

Pelosi: "There has never been a more open process"

C-Span asks Democrats to televise hearings:

C-SPAN is asking Democrats to open healthcare negotiations to television cameras.

Democratic leaders have reportedly decided to skip formal conference and instead talk behind closed doors to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills.

Which is why...

Top House Democrats deflected the request, saying the process has been highly transparent, with the House holding over 100 public hearings. They pledged to make the final stages visible in part via the Internet. "There has never been a more open process for any legislation," Ms. Pelosi said.


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Rachel Kania's picture
By Rachel Kania at 11:18PM

YAL at the University of California-San Deigo

The newly updated chapter at USCD conducted a protest of Nancy Pelosi and her policy choices. I will let Ankur Chawla, the new YAL chapter president,  explain the feeling of the day:

The Nancy Pelosi protest up in Irvine, CA was our first real event as an official UCSD-YAL club.  It was funny because we had an officer meeting the day before where we kind of spontaneously decided to drive up to Irvine with some SDSU-YAL students for the Nancy Pelosi protest as a celebration to kick start our club approval.

When we got to the hotel where the protest was taking place, we met John Dennis, Pelosi's opponent in the 2010 elections.

And boy oh boy was the protest growing.  People were showing up by the droves.  There was so much support at the protest that it really gave me a good feeling about the things us "little people" can accomplish if we stand together.  There must have been upwards of 300 people surrounding the hotel, all yelling as policemen wearily eyed and even took video footage of the protest.


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Matt Cockerill's picture
By Matt Cockerill at 7:50AM

Pelosi wants to "balance" your freedom

The arrogant  Nancy Pelosi has previously demonstrated that she believes that she deserves "special treatment," so her disgusting, anti-liberty rant today should hardly surprise. The  subtle implications of censorship, however, shocked even me.

You're just a person, Ms. Pelosi. You are should not be accorded special treatment, let alone given the right to take away our free speech for the sake of "safety."

Preston Mui's picture
By Preston Mui at 6:00AM

House Dems: CIA Withheld Secrets

From the New York Times: Seven House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee wrote that the CIA had misled them over the past 8 years.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”

I'll give credit where credit is due; it's a good thing that the House Democrats are voicing opposition to government secrecy. After all, it's better than what Obama is doing:

In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees

Wow. Makes you wonder what happened to all that talk of change, huh?

But if the members of Congress in this article really wanted change, they'd advocate for the transparency of not only the CIA, but the Fed too. None of the three Democrats mentioned in the article, Representatives Holt, Reyes, and Pelosi, are co-sponsors of H.R. 1207, Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency Act.


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Elliot Engstrom's picture
By Elliot Engstrom at 11:06PM

Petition Pelosi!!!!

It's time for a debate on H.R. 1207 in Congress! Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a national government official available to the entire country for petitioning. She has control of what will be debated in the House of Representatives, and it's time to tell her that we want a debate on this bill! Imagine a day when we all actually can't wait to sit around and watch C-SPAN! Go and sign the online petition, available HERE.