Pelosi: America Wants Us to Screw Up Again

That's pretty much my read on this story:

Building the case for a brand new jobs-creation bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says most Americans would not mind inflating the already-gaping deficit in exchange for more jobs.

The California Democrat said on a conference call Tuesday that Americans could "absorb" the hit to the federal budget, and she argued that their biggest complaint is not that the deficit is big -- it's that they're not seeing any benefit in return for increasing the U.S. debt load.

Despite the $787 billion stimulus package passed in February, unemployment climbed to 10.2 percent in October. While critics cite the jobless rate as a sign that the stimulus has failed, Pelosi argues that the federal government is just not trying hard enough.

"We have to shed any weakness that anybody may have about not wanting to be confrontational on this subject for fear that we'd be labeled not sensitive to the deficit," Pelosi said, in a recording posted by Think Progress.

"The American people have an anger about the growth of the deficit because they're not getting anything for it. ... If somebody has the idea that the percentage of GDP of what our national debt is will go up a bit, but they will now -- and their neighbors and their children -- will have jobs, I think they could absorb that, and then we ride it out and bring money in," she said.

"But I think if anybody is asking the public, 'Would you rather have a job or the percentage of GDP of our national debt would go up a little bit?' I think that everybody wants a job."

House Democrats are not calling the expected jobs proposal a "stimulus," though it would probably include similar measures like infrastructure spending.

Of the $787 billion in "stimulus" funds, something like a measly 15% has actually been spent, with the bulk of the spending coming in 2010 in the form of slush funds for Democrat special interest groups. How about just canceling all of that stuff and if you must spend the money, put it into something that will generate real economic growth, like tax cuts for small businesses.