Nancy Pelosi: 'Tax Cuts Are Spending'

In the mind of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, “tax cuts are spending.”

Pelosi said on Thursday that the federal government had to cut spending. However, she then lumped in several tax breaks for businesses in the category of “spending”:

Tax cuts are spending. Our whole budget is what, $3.5 trillion? So, when we talk about reducing spending, we certainly must, and we certainly have–$1.6 trillion in the previous Congress, $1.2 of it in the Budget Control Act. But spending is Subsidies for big oil, subsidies to send jobs overseas, breaks to send jobs overseas, breaks for corporate jets. They are called tax expenditures. Spending money on tax breaks. And that’s the spending that we must curtail as well.

In 2006, the year before Pelosi became Speaker of the House, the Congress’s budget was $2.65 trillion. By fiscal year 2011–the last year of her speakership–that figure had jumped to $3.59 trillion.