Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com continues to have a hard time weaning itself away from attacking Nancy Pelosi as she stepped down from House Democratic leadership. Showing how desperate the situation is, an anonymous Jan. 27 post claimed that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent out a tweet on January 22—the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s now-reversed Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a right—that said the “Republican-controlled Supreme Court” was jeopardizing women." Yes our anonymous writer still thinks Pelosi is speaker.
Meanwhile, editor Terry Jeffrey -- who has something of a psychological block regarding the fact that the federal debt increased significantly during Donald Trump's presidency -- desperately tried to spin things after President Biden pointed out that fact by making Pelosi the villain in a Feb. 9 article -- though he first had to concede that Biden was right:
During the two periods that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) served as speaker of the House, the total federal debt increased by $14,762,858,559,299.17, which is 46.93 percent of the total debt of $31,455,106,801,791.45 that the federal government held as of the close of business on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday drew attention to the significant increase in the debt that took place when President Donald Trump was in office.
“Nearly 25 percent of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone—the last one,” said Biden. “They’re the facts. Check it out. Check it out.”
In fact, when Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, the total federal debt was $19,947,304,555,212.49, according to the data published on the Treasury Department’s “Debt to the Penny” webpage.
When Trump left office four years later on Jan. 20, 2021, the total federal debt was $27,751,896,236,414.77.
Thus, during Trump’s administration the total federal debt increased by $7,804,591,681,202.28.
That is 24.81 percent of the total federal debt of $31,455,106,801,791.45 that the government maintained as of Feb. 7, 2023, the day Biden delivered his State of the Union Address.
However, the debt increased far more during the Trump administration when Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) was speaker of the House than it did when then-Rep. Paul Ryan was speaker.
Jeffrey then went into further spin mode by blaming COVID spending for the most of the debt increase under Trump:
Almost three quarters—74.61 percent—of the $7,804,591,681,202.28 that the debt increased during the Trump administration occurred when Nancy Pelosi was speaker. Only 25.39 percent occurred when Ryan was speaker.
One cause for the escalation in federal spending—and the resultant debt—in the second half of the Trump administration was the COVID-19 pandemic, which first hit the United States in early 2020.
In March and April of that year, Congress enacted four laws in response to the pandemic that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would increase the deficit by a combined $2.404 trillion from fiscal 2020 to fiscal 2030.
These COVID-19 response laws included the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which CBO estimated would cost $1.721 trillion; the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which CBO estimated would cost $483 billion; the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which CBO estimated would cost $192 billion; and the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, which CBO estimated would cost $8 billion.
But the debt that accumulated during the Trump’s administration was significantly less than the debt that accumulated during the two periods when Pelosi served as speaker.
Jeffrey left unspoken the fact that Trump was president and had ultimate authority over all that spending. Of course, not only did Jeffrey not give Biden that same pass, he attempted to portray Pelosi as wildly powerful on spending matters even though she led only one branch of Congress and was never the president who had final authority:
The total of $14,762,858,559,299.10 that the federal debt increased during Pelosi’s two periods as speaker of the House equals 46.93 percent of the federal government’s total debt of $31,455,106,801,791.45 as of Feb. 7.
As speaker of the House, Pelosi had considerable constitutional leverage over federal spending. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution states that: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” No federal law can be enacted unless it is approved by the House of Representatives that the speaker leads.
Since Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, a little more than two years ago, the federal debt has increased by $3,703,210,565,376.68—rising from $27,751,896,236,414.77 to $31,455,106,801,791.45.
This slightly-more-than-two-year increase in the debt under Biden equals 11.77 percent of the entire federal debt.
Jeffrey's article concluded with the usual tagline that "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Woudl Wold really approve of such biased and dishonest reporting?
