We begin today’s roundup with this op-ed from Nancy Pelosi calling out Republicans for their hypocrisy on tax cuts and the deficit:
President Clinton handed his successor, President George W. Bush, a projected $5.6 trillion 10-year budget surplus and eight years of economic expansion. But Republicans quickly abandoned any measure of fiscal responsibility and began a catastrophic spending spree. The completely unpaid-for tax cuts, including huge tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001, and two completely unpaid-for wars shattered our multitrillion-dollar surplus and created a vast new deficit.
After President Bush left the White House, President Obama was faced with a staggering $1.2 trillion projected budget deficit in his first year alone, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, and an economy in free fall. Under President Obama, the paygo law was reinstated, and we’ve brought the annual deficit from $1.2 trillion when President Obama took office to $544 billion today.
With the recent tax package, however, the Republican Congress is once again ignoring the inescapable mathematical realities behind budgeting. In advancing a narrow and expensive agenda largely benefiting special interests, they are adding trillions to the deficit in the coming decades.