On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) painted the GOP as a group that is utterly indifferent to the “totally disenfranchised” and minorities, jeering, “Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn for what you just described?”
Pelosi was prompted by a rant from CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who fulminated as he recommended a list of items that taxpayers give a “huge chunk” of money for:
Why can’t you go across the aisle and say, “Representative Lewis, civil rights legend, would have loved it if we could do something for the totally disenfranchised in this country, no matter what. Can we give? Can we give a huge chunk of money to the people who are disenfranchised, to minorities who want so badly to stay in business, and can’t, and to people who are trying to go to college or have student loans who are minorities, who are the most affected because they had the least chance in our country?” That’s gotta be something both sides can agree to.
Pelosi smirked, “Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn for what you just described?”
Cramer, acting horrified, “Ooh, geez!”
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Pelosi continued. “See, the thing is, they don’t believe in governance. They don’t believe in governance, and that requires some acts of government to do that. But just what you described is what Mr. Schumer, Chuck Schumer, is proposing that we do with some of the resources in the bill.”
“And you described Chuck Schumer’s proposal exactly,” she laughed. “In addition to the, um, the Heroes Act, if we’re talking about how much and how long and how targeted, [if] we’re going to juggle some of this money, let’s focus it where it’s going to do the most good.”
“Basically, economists tell us, spend the money, invest the money for those who need it the most because they will spend it, it will be a stimulus or at least a stabilization,” she continued. “And that’s a good thing; consumer confidence is a good thing for the economy. You know that better than anyone.”
Pelosi, who is worth an estimated $114 million according to her 2018 personal financial disclosure, and the Democrats have a penchant for spending other people’s money. As far as the government using taxpayers’ money as a panacea for the nation’s economic ills, legendary economist Henry Hazlitt noted in his classic “Economics in One Lesson”:
Everywhere government spending is presented as a panacea for all our economic ills. An enormous literature is based on this fallacy, and, as so often happens with doctrines of this sort, it has become part of an intricate network of fallacies that mutually support each other … Everything we get must in some way be paid for and all government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation… Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment.
Famed economist Walter E. Williams explained, “The fact that Congress has no resources of its very own forces us to recognize that the only way Congress can give one American one dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American through the tax code.”
Video of Pelosi below:
Can’t you find common ground with the GOP on doing something for minorities and the disenfranchised? @MadMoneyOnCNBC's @JimCramer asks.
“Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn for what you just described?” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says. https://t.co/RbVuuUTDhx pic.twitter.com/pGOo20SBPR
— CNBC (@CNBC) August 6, 2020