House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has named her three choices for the deficit-cutting Super Committee: Representatives James Clyburn of South Carolina, Xavier Becerra of California, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
The L.A. Times runs through their credentials:
Clyburn, who is black, and Van Hollen served as the House Democrats' appointees to an earlier budget deficit group led this year by Vice President Joe Biden. Van Hollen is the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Becerra, a party leader and of Latino heritage, is a member of the Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax policy.
It’s a pity we couldn’t have Pelosi herself on the Super Committee, as she’s one of the top economists in the Democrat Party. She’s the one who discovered the mystical stimulus power of unemployment benefits, which she described as “one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy,” able to “create jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
This became one of the only three ideas President Obama advanced during his latest “hard pivot” to job creation, along with maintaining his payroll tax cuts and spending more on infrastructure. Sure, we were doing all of those things already, but if we try a little harder and care a little more, jobs will blossom from their previously barren soil.
Pelosi also promised that ObamaCare, the greatest single job-killing predator to emerge from the beast pits of the Beltway, would give the economy a “jolt” that would create four million jobs. I don’t know how the Super Committee can be taken seriously if this economic MVP is sitting on the sidelines. Maybe she’ll text some ideas to van Hollen’s Blackberry during the meetings.
James Clyburn was no idle spectator to the debt-ceiling debate. He wanted Obama to shred the American system of government and use an executive order to raise the debt ceiling by fiat. "We've seen many big things done in history that way,” Clyburn said. “I've joked with my staff the other day, 'tell me what was the bill number of the Emancipation Proclamation.' It was an Executive Order. We integrated the armed services by Executive Order. We integrated public schools by Executive Order. Sometimes executives must order that things get done." I’m sure he’ll be brimming with ideas to reduce out-of-control government spending!
Van Hollen was a big supporter of increasing the national debt without any preconditions at all, as President Obama originally demanded. He figured all that unpleasant “deficit” stuff could be handled later. He was an early and energetic pusher of “hostage” rhetoric, as you can see from his May 31 statement about the House Republican vote to deny that “clean” debt ceiling increase:
Tonight’s vote was a political stunt. Republicans are demagoguing the debt ceiling increase for political gain, but their own budget would add $8.8 trillion to the debt over the next decade. By threatening to default, they are simply holding jobs and the economy hostage in order to pass their extreme budget that dismantles the Medicare guarantee. Indeed Republicans have now embraced the argument that they will pay China and foreign creditors, but not cover Medicare and Social Security. Republicans have doubled down on their plan to end the Medicare guarantee, and it is amazing what they will do to impose what Newt Gingrich rightly described as 'right wing social engineering.’
God forbid we have a budget that adds $8.8 trillion to the debt over the next decade? Er… how much are we adding under the Budget Control Act of 2011 again?
Van Hollen is also a master of bipartisanship with a deep respect for citizens who disagree with him. While Republicans were doing what his party resolutely refused to do – create and pass actual legislation with specific numbers – van Hollen sneered, “The last 24 hours have confirmed what many suspected – that while the Tea Party Republicans are a noisy and effective protest movement, they are unfit for governing.” Then he called for Speaker John Boehner to “work across the aisle to fashion a sensible solution.” That’s how bipartisanship is done!
Becerra is a tedious class-warfare, soak-the-rich robot. Last month, he said this to ABC News:
At the end of the day, no one is talking about - but Republicans, my colleagues and the Republicans that keeping talking about how Democrats want to tax everyone. That's not true. Not everyone drives or flies in corporate jets not everyone gets to drill for oil and get a subsidy from doing so not everyone is making zillions of dollars and getting tax breaks that reduce their rates of taxation lower than the secretaries that work for these folks.
We're talking about bringing that tax group back to some sense of fairness and that means all those folks who benefitted under the Bush tax cuts through millions of breaks should come to the table and sacrifice the way all of our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and our families are doing today as they try to figure out how to pay their mortgage and feed the family.
Give up your economic liberty for the troops, people! If you resist paying higher taxes to fund irresponsible government spending, you might as well be holding Captain America down while the Red Skull stomps on his throat.
The Super Committee is all set. Its powerhouse Democrat team has the chops to make certain it becomes one of history’s great footnotes.
