Members of the Super Committee might be reluctant. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — who’s a close ally of three Democrats on the panel — says they would be doing a disservice to advance deficit reducing legislation without knowing its impact on economic growth.
“What the possibility is, of taking every initiative and passing it through the CBO for its job creating potential I think is a great idea,” Pelosi said at her weekly Capitol briefing Thursday. “I don’t know why anybody would want to make a judgment without that evaluation, especially at this time.”
Pelosi noted that Democrats insisted that the panel focus on employment — and the committee’s rules reflect that to some extent.
“The committee put its rules together in a bipartisan way…it was a priority for the House Democrats in the writing of the rules to say that as they made judgment as to how these initiatives would reduce the deficit that they should also demonstrate how each initiative would create jobs — or not,” Pelosi said.
A small group of Senate Democrats is pushing this idea publicly — after all, a deficit plan that will actively harm the economy is unlikely to pass the Committee, let alone Congress, and tacking such an analysis on to that legislation will mean they can’t ignore the issue.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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