Chart of the Day: Austerity? What austerity?

Pelosi served as Speaker of the House from January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2011.

Compare the following BLS measurements from the last full month before Pelosi (December 2006) to the last full month of her time as Speaker (December 2010).

Unemployment Rate:
Before Pelosi (December 2006): 4.4%
After four years of Pelosi (December 2010): 9.3%

Discouraged workers:
Before Pelosi (December 2006): 274,000
After four years of Pelosi (December 2010): 1,318,000

Employment-population ratio (% employment for civilian noninstitutional population age 16 years and over):
Before Pelosi (December 2006): 63.4%
After four years of Pelosi (December 2010): 58.3%

Pelosi’s record is one of destroying jobs (with three hikes in the minimum wage, TARP, Porkulus, Cash for Clunkers, OBAMACARE, etc.), not creating jobs.

Pelosi didn’t create jobs, she created over a Million more discouraged workers, and several Million more unemployed.

ITguy on May 16, 2013 at 7:51 PM

Pelosi said that large annual deficits are a NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE and promised, both in writing and from the House Speaker’s rostrum “no more deficit spending”:

Over the past decade, the Republican controlled Congress took our nation in the wrong direction. Too many Americans are paying a heavy price for those wrong choices: record costs for energy, health care and education; jobs shipped overseas; and budgets that heap record debt on our children. For millions, the middle-class dream has been replaced by a middle-class squeeze…

Democrats are proposing a New Direction for America…

With integrity, civility and fiscal discipline, our New Direction for America will use commonsense principles to address the aspirations and fulfill the hopes and dreams of all Americans. That is our promise to the American people….

Our federal budget should be a statement of our national values. One of those values is responsibility. Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of piling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore “Pay As You Go” budget discipline.

Budget discipline has been abandoned by the Bush Administration and its Republican congressional majorities. Congress under Republican control has turned a projected $5.6 trillion 10-year surplus at the end of the Clinton years into a nearly $3 trillion deficit– including the four worst deficits in the history of America. The nation’s debt ceiling has been raised four times in just five years to more than $8.9 trillion. Nearly half of our nation’s record debt is owned by foreign countries including China and Japan. Without a return to fiscal discipline, the foreign countries that make our computers, our clothing and our toys will soon be making our foreign policy. Deficit spending is not just a fiscal problem – it’s a national security issue as well.

Our New Direction is committed to “Pay As You Go” budgeting – no more deficit spending.

Again, Pelosi promised no more deficit spending.

Pelosi promised that both in writing (above) and live on C-SPAN:

After years of historic deficits, this 110th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending. Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt.

- New Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 01/04/2007

Last budget passed by a Republican House, Republican Senate, and Republican President: FY 2007.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (along with then-Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton) took majority control of the budgeting process starting with FY 2008.

FY 2007 Deficit: $160.7 Billion
FY 2008 Deficit: $458.6 Billion
FY 2009 Deficit: $1,412.7 Billion

The FY 2009 budget, passed by the Nancy Pelosi House, the Harry Reid Senate, and signed by pResident Obama (that’s right, it wan’t Bush) “featured” an annual deficit that was 8.8 times the size of the annual deficit produced by the Republican majority just two years earlier for FY 2007.

And for Pelosi’s final two Fiscal Years (FY 2010 and the start of FY 2011) NO BUDGET WAS PASSED AT ALL!

But here are the deficit numbers from those Fiscal Years (as reported by the White House OMB):
FY 2010 Deficit: $1,293.5 Billion
FY 2011 Deficit: $1,299.6 Billion

After all those promises of “no more deficit spending”, Pelosi inherited a budget deficit under $161 Billion and created the four largest deficits in U.S. history, averaging $1,116 Billion ($1.116 TRILLION) per year… nearly SEVEN TIMES the size of the deficit she inherited.

So, let’s recap:

Under Pelosi, unemployment more than doubled.
Under Pelosi, discouraged workers more than quadrupled (almost quintupled).
Under Pelosi, deficits were supposed to go to zero (the implication of her promise of “no more deficit spending”), but instead grew to SEVEN TIMES the size.

ITguy on May 16, 2013 at 8:08 PM