Tornado Alley (PROG)

[JimLur]

Pelosi blames Bush for $9 trillion in debt added under Obama

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blamed former President George W. Bush and the Republicans on Friday for the more than $9 trillion that has been added to the national debt under President Obama’s watch.

Pelosi argued that under Obama, the annual budget deficit, which contributes to the national debt, has been reduced dramatically, and said that without Obama’s work, the national debt would be even higher. She also mostly blamed Bush for not paying for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“When President Obama stood on the steps on the Capitol eight years from next week, the [budget] deficit was $1.4 trillion — one year deficit,” she said. “It’s reduced by 70 percent in his administration. Much of the increase in the national debt that has occurred from this time still springs from two unpaid-for wars, cost that we owe our veterans following that, giveaways that they gave to the pharmaceutical industry, and the high-end tax cuts that have carried forward without any job production. Absent the work of President Obama, this national debt would be even higher.”
I am reminded of Mary McCarthy’s famous quote, regarding Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.'” Every word Nancy Pelosi utters is a lie, all conjunctions and articles included. President Bush submitted a budget for fiscal year 2009, which included a projected deficit of a way-too-high $407.4 billion.¹ However, the Congress, then under control of the Democrats, with Mrs Pelosi serving as the Speaker of the House, declined to pass President Bush’s budget.

Rather, after the end of FY2008 on September 30, 2008, Congress funded the federal government through the mechanisms of continuing resolutions, rather than normal budgeting and appropriations. Why?

The Democrats believed, and rightly so, that Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) would win the 2008 presidential election, and they wanted to have appropriations made under a Democratic president, rather than having to bargain with a Republican. On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law,² and on March 11, 2009, he signed the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 into law.³

The national debt stood at $10,626,877,048,913.08 on President Bush’s last day in office; having entered office with a national debt of $5,727,776,738,304.64, that means that $4,899,100,210,628.34 was added to the national debt under the younger President Bush. Trouble is, the national debt stands at $19,941,807,383,847.05 right now, meaning that $9,314,930,334,915.97 has been added to the debt since President Obama took office, and he still has a week left to go! The increase in the national debt under President Obama is just a shade under twice that added under his predecessor.

http://www.redstate.com/diary/kentucky_dana/2017/01/15/nancy-pelosi-big-lie/