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Pelosi Looking to Blame Republicans for Her* Mistakes

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“House Republicans,” Kara Rowland writes in the Washington Times, writes, “this weekend approved a funding bill that cuts 2011 spending levels by $61 billion compared with 2010, but the measure now goes to the Senate, where majority Democrats oppose it.”  Actually, I quibble with the word to which I added emphasis in that sentence.  While Republicans voted the bill out of the House, it’s won’t be going to the Senate right away.  You see, according to the Senate’s web-page, the Senate will be out of session next week.

So, that doesn’t give the Democratic-controlled chamber much time to consider the funding bill and work out compromise legislation with the House before the continuing resolution funding the federal government expires the following week, on March 4 to be precise.  The reason we need such a resolution is that last year when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, they failed to pass a budget for the 2011 Fiscal Year (which began last October 1).

Too busy were Democrats with the big ticket items on their party’s agenda, that they neglected one of the legislature’s fundamental responsibilities, passing a budget.  So, without a budget, both Houses need to agree to a “short-term spending resolution to keep the government running” after March 4.  Without this resolution, the government shuts down.

Now, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as I reported on Friday, is laying the groundwork to blame Republicans for such a shutdown.  But, if it weren’t  for her failure last year when she was House Speaker to pass a budget, Congress wouldn’t this month be considering a continuing resolution.  Her successor John Boehner has had to finish up the work she and her fellow Democrats left undone.  And if Mrs. Pelosi’s Senate counterparts were committed to avoiding a government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would call his chamber into session.

The shutdown, Rovin writes in Hot Air’s Green Room, “will be the Democrat’s fault plain and simple.” He goes on to ask an important question, wondering why the president hasn’t instructed “Harry Reid and the Senate Majority to forgo their vacation this next week and do the peoples work to put this nation back on a fiscally sound track”.

Why indeed.

*and Harry Reid’s.

Thanks to reader Paul for inspiring this post with a thoughtful e-mail.

Comments

  1. I think what is really going to kill The Narrative (about nasty Rethuglicans shutting down government) this time is that right now, the nation is gripped by the spectacle of… nasty public-sector unions and cowardly Democrat officials shutting down government. And Bammy cheering them on.

  3. And this is the same Republican house whose priorities are repealing health care and adding hundreds of billions of dollars on top of the projected deficit and repealing abortion choice legislation?

    I thought the priority was “jobs, jobs, jobs” not abortion repeal and making everyday citizens bear more burden for health care in the long run.

  4. If there ever was a time for the Republicans to grow a pair and go on the attack (sincerest apologies to you lefties who are offended by such a violent term) it’s now.

    Every time Pelosi spews her venom, a Republican needs to ask her why she didn’t pass a budget. Right out of Alinsky – personalize and marginalize.

  5. Republican house whose priorities are repealing health care and adding hundreds of billions of dollars on top of the projected deficit

    Countervail, what on Earth are you blabbering about now? Repealing ObamaCare will *save* hundreds of billions.

  6. Counterfail doesn’t need facts, NDT. He *knows* what’s right.

    And he ignores the elephant in the room. The House passed the bill. Now it’s up to the Senate. The Democrat controlled Senate.

  11. Blame everybody but herself. Who can forget Nancy at her podium with that worried look on her face as she told the cameras about the hateful rhetoric coming out of the Tea Party and talk radio. She was worried that it could lead to violence. Isn´t she worried about the rhetoric of the protesters in Madison?

  12. $61 Billion cut from 2010 levels?

    Wow… that’s some serious cutting. $61B from humongous 2010 levels. $61B out of $3,400,000,000,000 works out to (using trusty HP engineer-geek calculator to handle large numbers) about 1.8 percent.

    Countervail: if repealing Obamacare would force “everyday citizens bear more burden for health care in the long run” then who, pray tell, will bear the burden if O-care isn’t repealed? Will the gubmint fund “free” healthcare from the vast store of gold coins we have squirreled away at Ft. Knox?

    ILC in #1: I wouldn’t be so optimistic. Obama has been blaming Bush of everything wrong regardless of fact so why shouldn’t Pelosi be able to pull it off as well. Face it, the GOP has a terrible track record making a case to a public that won’t see the shark until it has a leg in its teeth. Obama’s approval ratings remain high given the sorry state of things and his awful performance so far.

  14. You conveniently forget to include the rest of the same CBO report you cite that says:

    “H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over the next decade because the net savings from eliminating the coverage provisions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending increases and revenue reductions.

    In total, CBO and JCT estimate that H.R. 2 would reduce outlays by about $604 billion and reduce revenues by about $813 billion over the 2012-2021 period (see Table 2).”

    So while some of the things proposed by H.R. 2 would save money, they are offset by things that would overall cost more than the savings, by $200 billion.

    Try again ladies. You never failed to underwhelm.

  15. Oh, I see Counterfail isn’t capable of reading, either.

    Let’s break this down for it.

    “H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over the next decade because the net savings from eliminating the coverage provisions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending increases and revenue reductions.

    In total, CBO and JCT estimate that H.R. 2 would reduce outlays by about $604 billion and reduce revenues by about $813 billion over the 2012-2021 period (see Table 2).”

    That problem is easy to fix, since the Republicans are already cutting spending.

    So it doesn’t matter if “revenues are reduced”, which is irrelevant in the first place because that money belongs to the taxpayers, not to the government.

    You lose, Counterfail. As always, you get your butt kicked when the facts are presented because all you can do is repeat talking points.

  16. Everyone seems to forget that before the healthcare reform, everyday citizens were paying plenty for the health care that was being provided by government mandate for those that couldn’t afford it themselves. Either in the form of unexpected illness where someone wasn’t insured properly or enough, to those that couldn’t afford health care in the first place, you and I were already paying for PREMIUM service, well jacked up by the health care providers.

    Not that I’d put it past all your Dowager queens here, but are you going to refuse treatment for the underprivileged altogether?

  17. Wow, Counterfail fails math.

    From ILC’s link.

    Of course, Democrats are going to focus on the CBO’s other finding — that repealing the health care law would add $210 billion to deficits over this period. But let’s break that down. It’s true that the law also includes $732 billion in spending cuts (primarily for Medicare). Right now, we’re engaged in a bitter debate over how to wring savings out of the federal budget so we can reduce the debt. Well, if the $732 billion in cuts had not been used to pay for a new entitlement, they’d still be available for deficit reduction.

    Even so, when all the cuts are taken into account, net spending still goes up by $604 billion under the health care law. The way it achives deficit reduction is through $813 billion in tax hikes. In other words, the law “saves” money only if you think alll money is government property to begin with — it certainly doesn’t save the taxpayers who are coughing up the additional $813 billion.

    .

    So Counterfail not only fails at Math, he fails at reading, and apparently basic understanding of ownership.

    He really never does fail to disappoint, does he?

  19. Either in the form of unexpected illness where someone wasn’t insured properly or enough, to those that couldn’t afford health care in the first place, you and I were already paying for PREMIUM service, well jacked up by the health care providers.

    Key word there: “unexpected”.

    Now we would be forced to pay “premium service” costs whether they were actually needed or not. Before, we only paid when accidents happened; now we’re going to pay the same amount whether they happen or not. We’ve gone from an occasional outlay to a guaranteed outlay at a higher price.

    And what do you mean “you and I”, Countervail? You’ve never paid a penny for anything, you leech. That’s why welfare brats like you are squalling and screaming because we won’t let you loot our pockets or steal the money your grandparents and parents put aside.

  20. Not that I’d put it past all your Dowager queens here, but are you going to refuse treatment for the underprivileged altogether?

    No, Countervail.

    We’ve been paying through charitable donations for years for people who actually need it.

    What’s going to happen is that leeches like yourself who have been stealing from others and plan to use the law to do more of the same will have to pay your own bills.

    Don’t even pretend you care about the “underprivileged”. Pelosi has over $100 million in assets, and won’t spend a penny on it to purchase health insurance for people right now — but she certainly will raise taxes on everyone else and refuse to pay her own, just like Charles Rangel.

  21. Negative Nancy can point her finger, but she is indeed to blame since she did not pass budget last year; trying to replicate the 1996 government shutdown is a fool’s errand given we have different circumstances. President Obama is not President Clinton. Furthermore, the Democrats want a government shutdown–not Republicans.

    Indeed, the Republican House passed a budget last Friday night. Now, it’s up to Senator Harry Reid’s Senate to follow through.

  22. I do not think this word “failure” means what you think it means.

    Ms. Pelosi would not submit the FY11 budget because her caucus could not defend it. We know from the elections they could not defend anything else, with Democrats returning on the strength of brand loyalty alone.

    She did similarly not submit a budget for FY09 because her caucus would not be able to hide behind then-President Bush. One may believe also in the pettiness of not giving Bush the final say over the budget to be run by President Obama in his first year. Ms. Pelosi made no mistakes. She submitted and passed what she wanted, when she wanted, and two presidents signed their names.

    This is not “failure.” This is calculation.

  23. I may have misunderstood the article’s math too. But here is a net picture, after re-reading the article.

    With ObamaCare: $1.4T in new spending – $800B in painful, job-destroying tax hikes – $7xxB in some Medicare spending cuts = $1xxB in deficit reduction.

    With ObamaCare repealed, and a Republican Congress: No new spending, no tax hikes, probably $7xxB or more in various spending cuts = $7xxB or more in deficit reduction.

    So let’s see. We can stick with ObamaCare and ruin our economy with $700B in net new spending and $800B in tax hikes.

    Or, we can repeal ObamaCare and let the Republicans cut the budget the way it out to be cut… stimulating our economy for real (by removing all that job-destroying spending and tax hikes), and achieving a deficit reduction several times larger.

    Leave it to left-liberals to *not* see which one of those is *obviously* better.

  24. (continued) I am, of course, making an assumption that Republicans will do some budget-cutting – and the Left agrees with that assumption, given the conniptions they’ve gone into this past week or two when Republicans separately proposed $1 trillion in spending cuts.

    I also believe that the CBO has greatly under-estimated the costs of ObamaCare. Their number are biased (downward, or in ObamaCare’s favor) by unrealistic economic and spending assumptions that the Democrats ordered them to use. Every Federal entitlement costs, in the end, MANY times what is backers had claimed. Don’t forget that.

  26. #20: In addition to your argument, medical care for the underpriviliged (i.e. ‘poor’) has been the law since 1986. No hospital can refuse a patient in need. Need is generally defined as being in immediate danger of losing life, limb, or eyesight.

  27. Oh girls, I know you can’t help but titter in delight in your petticoats when you somehow think you’ve gotten the upper hand, but the ideas you’re floating about the CBO report were proven dead wrong weeks ago by a slew of people much smarter than me.

    Remember, willful ignorance is not the same as being right.

    Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee-hee.

  28. Shorter Counterfail:

    “Well you got me by the short hairs, and I can’t come up with any more information, so I’ll defer to these mythical authorities that I won’t name, because they’ll get shredded like all of my others.”

  29. I think that “mythical authority” first and foremost was the CBO whose own conclusion refutes the small, out-of-context quote being passed from right-wing site to right-wing site without further examination. Much as so many other right-wing memes that stem from heavily edited, whole cloth “facts.”

    Oh ladies, you keep me in stitches, much like the hyperventilating hi-jinks Housewives from any of those Bravo shows.

  30. Oh and one final thought Ladies…

    Seeing as how this legislation isn’t going forward through the Senate and certainly wouldn’t be enacted by the President, it should upset you that your elected representatives are trying to repeal a program that’s been scored to reduce the deficit and wasting millions of taxpayers dollars in the meantime for symbolic gestures. It should, and obviously it doesn’t.

    I guess sometimes it takes Democratic leadership to buckle down, man up, and make level-headed choices. Pelosi busts balls and then John Boehner cries like a little pansy. Who’s your Mama, girls?

  31. Countervail must’ve learned his arithmetic in DC where increases can be made to look like reductions:

    It’s the same kind of mad deficit accounting in Obamacare: It reduces debt by adding $540 billion in new spending, then adding $770 billion in new taxes. Presto: $230 billion of “debt reduction.” – Charles Krauthammer

    http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/260016/barack-obama-s-louis-xv-budget-charles-krauthammer

    PS: I have to agree with CV on Weepy John Boehner… can’t we find someone who can kick some butt?

  34. So, the question is:

    1. Is Countervail so dumb that he doesn’t realize the CBO numbers were cooked by frontloading the taxes of ObamaCare and pushing the payouts into the out years to create a deceptive illusion of deficit reduction; which also depended on “savings” that no realistic analysis said would ever be realized?

    2. Does he realize the books were cooked, but still claims ObamaCare reduced the deficit anyway, because he is a dishonest party hack?

    Dumb or dishonest, which is it?