Touching Down On Planet Pelosi
IBD EDITORIALS
Posted 03/16/2011 07:14 PM ET
Leadership: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the House floor Wednesday to claim that "Democrats have long fought for fiscal responsibility as a top priority." What star system does she inhabit?
If the U.S. Capitol were a comedy club, Nancy Pelosi would be its resident Phyllis Diller, leaving them rolling in the aisles of the visitor gallery.
One of the wild-haired comedienne's favorite one-liners was about how she wanted her children to have all the things she couldn't afford — "then I want to move in with them."
The Pelosi Congress spent all the trillions that America couldn't afford, squandering our children's future on stimulus packages that didn't stimulate and a government takeover of the nation's health insurance system.
Now Pelosi says, "Democrats are in the lead on fiscal soundness" — a statement that would be a real knee-slapper if it weren't so terrifying in what it reveals of the Democratic Party's economic policy psychosis.
House Minority Leader Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have avoided spending cuts like vampires avoiding the crucifix. Reid last week refused to enact even a minor reduction; Pelosi has resisted GOP moves to use continuing resolutions to cut spending.
Meanwhile, President Obama vows to veto any and all Republican spending cuts and refuses to negotiate on the budget with the newly elected Republican leaders of the House of Representatives.
After voters took House control away from Democrats last November, Obama promised, "There are going to be a whole bunch of areas we can agree on." The "overwhelming message that I hear from the voters," he said, "is that we want everybody to act responsibly in Washington."
But in Obama's world, cutting any spending apparently isn't one of those "whole bunch of areas" of potential bipartisanship the voters demanded. At last week's press conference, the president sneeringly downplayed Congress' budget battle as "last year's business."
Now roll Pelosi's claim that Democrats lead on fiscal soundness around on the tongue.
The fact is that during her speakership, and Reid's rule in the Senate, Democrats used the economy's massive downturn — itself the result of Democrats' politicizing and poisoning of the once-sound investment of mortgages — as a pretext to bloat the federal government's expenditures by more than 21% over two years, bringing spending to levels never imagined.
America is gravely in need of market-based reform of our massive entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — with their huge automatic annual spending increases. But Obama political guru David Plouffe "appeared to slam the door shut on even modest cuts during a conference call with liberal reporters and bloggers last month," Politico reported.
Plouffe says Obama refuses to reduce Social Security benefits, refuses to raise the retirement age by a year or two and refuses to recalculate cost-of-living adjustments.
Americans don't need some Sunday show pundit to see what is going on here: The president and his White House staff are now heavy into campaign mode. They're looking toward re-election next year, and the chance for a bipartisan pact saving the long-term fiscal future takes a back seat to Obama's political future.
But when America fully appreciates the mess we're in, the best place for the president to campaign may be on some planet in Nancy Pelosi's alternate reality.
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