House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi unveiled a series of proposals for the deficit reduction “super committee” in a press briefing today. She called for what appeared to be a combination of short-term spending measures, long-term spending cuts, and tax increases.
Jobs spending in the short term seems to be Pelosi’s highest priority and her chief exhortation to the “super committee.”
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“Jobs and growth are where the focus should be, and then decisions about revenue and savings and the timing of them should spring from how we can create jobs which bring in revenue to the Treasury,” she said in her opening remarks, adding that “job creation reduces the deficit.” She outlined a short-term jobs plan that seems to require government to create manufacturing jobs through spendng proposals.
Calling for the super committee to promulgate “a plan that is big, bold, and balanced,” Pelosi said the super committee plan “must have a jobs component, a revenue component, and a savings component.” That said, she opened the door to the possibility of entitlement reforms. She said that her three appointments to the committee “are not on a short leash,” despite her promise that she would not appoint anyone to the committee who would cut entitlement benefits, and praised the general form of bipartisan plans such as the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction proposal.
Pelosi also pointed to the abortive debt-ceiling negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as a possible path to compromise for the super-committee.
