Pelosi: There's No 'Spending Problem'
With the sequester set to kick in on March 1, President Obama and his Democrat allies are hell-bent on shifting the conversation away from proper government cuts, and toward higher taxes. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took to Fox News Sunday to explain that America does not have a spending problem. “It is almost a false argument to say that we have a spending problem. We have a budget deficit problem,” Pelosi insisted.
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You post an article that uses one line out of a 14 minute interview and think you are posting facts?
Why didn't you post the transcript of the entire article? Why didn't your Briebart folks post a link to the transcript?
Is it because the transcript puts the quote into context? A context that doesn't fit the propaganda agenda of the article???
Here is the link to the interview and transcript...it is from your gloriously "Fair and Balanced" Fox News....so you can't dispute it.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John McCain on avoiding automatic spending cuts | Interviews | Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace - Fox News
Mrs. Pelosi (just as bad for this county as the right wing Tea Parties) is being baited by Mr. Wallace about tax cuts. He is pushing for spending cuts...solely spending cuts. He keeps pushing on spending cuts with the clear inference that our bidget problem is solely a spending problem and that taxes should never be raised on anyone...Mrs. Pelosi is a ridiculous response to a similarly ridiculous line of questions fostered by an interviewer pushing a political agenda.
Here's the transcript I'll post the whole section...:
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE JOHN BOEHNER, R-OHIO: At some point, Washington has to deal with its spending problem. I watched them kick the can down though road for 22 years I have been here and I have had enough of it. It's time to act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Congresswoman, let's look at this numbers. Are you really saying that in a government that spends $3.5 trillion a year, that increased federal discretionary spending by 14 percent, over the last four years, you can't find $85 billion to cut, to avoid the sequester?
PELOSI: Well, we have cut in terms of agriculture subsidies, there are tense of billions of dollars in cuts there and that should be balanced with eliminating subsidy for big oil. Why should we do -- why should we lower Pell Grants instead of eliminating the subsidies for big oil?
WALLACE: Why not just cut spending? Eighty-five billion dollars in a $3.5 trillion government.
PELOSI: Let's back up from -- with all due respect to the speaker, what he said is not the gospel truth. The fact is that a lot of the spending increases came during the Bush administration. Two unpaid for wars we got ourselves engaged in. A prescription drug plan that added enormous amounts to our spending, and the tax cuts at the high end that did not create jobs and create revenue coming. So that's --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But the total debt has increased $5 trillion since this president came in.
PELOSI: Well, part of that is from the -- what we had to do to avoid going over the cliff of the recession -- depression. Yes, we had the Recovery Act which saves or created 3.5 million jobs. You know the record of job growth in the private sector has been consistent from many record number of months.
So, again, we have to make a judgment about what -- how do we get growth with jobs? That's where the revenue comes from. You don't get it by cutting down your (INAUDIBLE) or cutting in education, cutting back on investments in science, and National Institutes of Health, food safety, you name it.
So, it isn't as much you a spending problem as a priorities, and that is what the budget is, setting priorities.
WALLACE: But you talk about growth. Even Christina Romer, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers for the president, says you increase taxes, that also hurts growth.
PELOSI: Well, it's about timing. It's about timing. And it's about timing as to when make cuts, as well. We --
WALLACE: But you -- the fiscal cliff, you raised taxes $650 billion, right away.
PELOSI: Yes, and that was a very good thing to do on people making over -- the high end in our population.
So, here's the thing, though -- we are here to have a budget that has revenue coming in, that has investments made, into the future. We also want to make decisions in those two areas where growth with jobs are created, because more jobs, more revenue coming in. Nothing brings more money to the Treasury of the United States, than investment in education of the American people.
So, we need to recognize that, which cuts really help us and which cuts really hurt our future. And, cuts in education, scientific research and the rest are harmful, and they are what are affected by the sequestration.
So, it is almost a false wrong to say we have a spending problem. We have a deficit problem that we have to address. Right now, we have low interest on the national debt and it's a good time for us to act to lower the deficit.
We think the deficit and the national debt are at immoral levels. We think they must be reduced. We're sick and tired of paying interest on the national debt. And that 15 percent, that's a large percentage of the budget, the interest on the national debt. It's lower now because of the lower interest rates.
WALLACE: But again, all I would say is: we've got a $3.5 trillion budget and they are talking about $85 billion in cuts.
Let me -- let's go to the taxes, though --
PELOSI: OK. But we agreed in spending -- we agreed to $1.6 trillion in spending, in discretionary, domestic spending.
WALLACE: But the sequestration is just spending cuts.
PELOSI: Right. Secondly, we have gone to Medicare and had savings of over a trillion dollars in Medicare already. And when I say we, I mean the Democrats. And what the Republicans are proposing is to make a voucher of Medicare, no longer making it a guarantee. There are other things in this discussion that I think American people make fully aware --
WALLACE: We're going to touch on them --
PELOSI: -- understand what it means in their daily lives.
WALLACE: Let's talk about taxes. You keep talking about raising taxes and you talk about making the wealthy -- let me ask the question first.
PELOSI: Yes.
WALLACE: Let me ask the question -- you keep talking about making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
PELOSI: Right.
WALLACE: The top 1 percent --
PELOSI: Right, right.
WALLACE: -- the top 1 percent pay 37 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent pay 59 percent of all federal taxes. If you took the total income of everyone making more than $1 million a year, if you taxed it all, at 100 percent, that's only $726 billion, which is less than the projected deficit for the year.
I mean, the bottom line, Congresswoman, is you can't raise taxes enough to solve the deficit problem.
PELOSI: Nobody is saying that. We are saying it has to be balanced. Now, on the subject of the high end, we're not talking about raising rates. We did that. We eliminated the high end tax cuts of the Bush years which only increased the deficit, and didn't create jobs.
We kept the middle income tax cuts. The -- what we have in our proposal that Congressman Van Hollen has put forth, our top Democrat on the Budget Committee, is to say we'll eliminate subsidy to big oil. And it gives us a lot of money, eliminating the subsidy for big oil.
We also have the Buffett Rule which says all of the high income people would pay a minimum of -- they would have to pay --
WALLACE: So, you're raising tax on the wealthy.
PELOSI: No, you are saying they should pay their fair share, which is 30 percent, which is even lower than 39.6, which is the rate -- the bracket they are in.
WALLACE: But you are saying that if they have a deduction from a home mortgage --
PELOSI: They take advantage of so many loopholes.
WALLACE: Well, deductions that are on the books. But the point is --
PELOSI: Thirty percent.
WALLACE: The point is, that you can't raise enough money. I mean, the main driver of the debt is entitlements. Sixty percent of our budget, our spending, is on entitlements.
When Medicare started life expectancy was 70. It's now 79. Don't you have to raise the eligibility age and slow the growth of benefits? Isn't that the way to deal with the deficit?
PELOSI: OK. I'm glad you brought up Medicare because don't you think you should -- to use your question -- don't you think you ought to see if raising the age really does save money?
Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the Earth for two years. They're going to have medical need and they're going to have to be attended to. And the earlier intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life.
I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. And I do think the challenge with Medicare is not Medicare, the challenge is rising medical health care costs in general and prescription drugs and the rest of that, that driver those costs. So, that's what we have to address, which we did in the Affordable Care Act and we are about to see some reports from the Institute of Medicine, about how we reduce the cost of health care, in Medicare, because we are paying for quality, not quantity of procedures, but quality of performance.
And I think that there is money to be saved there. And I don't think it has to come out of benefits, or beneficiaries, and I don't think you have to raise the age.
