Morning Bell: Blaming Bush Doesn’t Create Jobs

Conn Carroll / August 09, 2010

In January 2009 after it became clear that the leftist majority in Congress would pass President Barack Obama’s $862 billion economic stimulus bill without a single vote from a Republican, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended her partisan approach, telling Politico: “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.” Last Friday, some 19 months after the stimulus bill became law, the Labor Department issued its monthly jobs report showing the U.S. economy shed 131,000 jobs and unemployment tread water at 9.5% as 181,000 workers left the workforce entirely. These numbers are so terrible that the Federal Reserve is expected to downgrade its assessment of the U.S. economic outlook when it meets tomorrow. Desperate to shift blame away from her economic policies, Speaker Pelosi released a statement Friday blaming President George W. Bush for the economy’s anemic recovery: “Today’s report shows our teachers, police officers, firefighters, and nurses are still feeling the worst of the Bush recession.”

Notice how Speaker Pelosi is only concerned about the economy’s effect on government and unionized workers: teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses. If you happen to work for the government, Speaker Pelosi is prepared to move heaven and earth to make sure your pay isn’t cut. But if you work for the private sector, Speaker Pelosi has nothing to offer you but higher taxes. That is why she is calling back the House to vote on another state government bailout. This time the price tag is $26.1 billion, funded in part by $11 billion in tax hikes on U.S. companies that compete internationally. (more…)