House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has attributed the nation’s sluggish economy to the “failed” policies of President George W. Bush. The Daily Caller asked Pelosi whether or not she, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should take “ownership” of the current state of the economy.
“President Obama was a job creator by, on day one. I’ve probably said this to you before but just in case I think it bears repeating, a job creator from day one. In his inaugural address, he called for swift, bold action now; and one week and one day after his speech, the House of Representatives passed the economic Recovery Act, which even the CBO says has saved or created over 3 million jobs,” Pelosi responded Thursday at the Capitol.
“We are in a very, very deep hole and that’s what we have to come out of. It’s not cyclical. It’s systemic. It’s structural, it’s very big and that’s why it was really important for us to have more job creation but as you know, once we didn’t have the 60th vote in the Senate, that was hard to do, even with the Democratic majority in the House and now of course, with the Republican majority in the House, [there’s] no job agenda.”
Pelosi places blame for the country’s high unemployment rate on the Republican-controlled House, which convened in January 2011.
“Up until, I think, his last day in office, President Reagan was blaming his economic woes on President Jimmy Carter, who hadn’t been president for 8 years already. It’s not about — again, this president has been so professional, and by that I mean he understands the role that he has to play and the responsibility that he has,” she said.
“So, with the given that he [Obama] got he has I think tried very hard to take us down the right path. … Blame it on the do-nothing Congress because they have obstructed so much in addition to the policies that that he inherited.”
The White House originally projected that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009, would prevent unemployment from rising above 8 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate stands at 8.6 percent.