Pelosi urges the supercommittee to abandon ‘trickle down’

The top House Democrat is urging the budget supercommittee to adopt a bottoms-up “community recovery” strategy for job development rather than the “trickle down” approach championed by the Republicans.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued Thursday that targeted spending on communities hit hardest by the recession — not more benefits for the wealthy — is the best way to address the nation’s years-old jobs crisis.

{mosads}”No more of this trickle-down [theory] or [reliance] on what the mood is on Wall Street or this or that,” Pelosi said during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference in Washington. “It’s about community recovery.”

Pelosi urged the members of the supercommittee to recognize “that this is not an ordinary committee.”

“We want them to be thinking about – not just revenue [and] cuts – we want them to think about growth,” she said. “We want them to acknowledge that 15 percent of the country lives in poverty. [It] takes your breath away. There’s an immorality to it.”

The remarks are indication that the Democrats have no intention of backing away from their long-held belief that short-term increases in infrastructure and other public works spending — combined with a longer-term strategy for reining in deficits — is the best treatment for the unstable economy and dismal unemployment numbers.

Republicans, by contrast, are pushing a recovery strategy that focuses on deregulation, sharp spending cuts and tax benefits for the wealthy.

“America has a spending problem,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday on Fox News. “The government continues to spend more money than what we have, and I don’t believe it makes any sense to tax the very people that we expect to invest in our economy, help grow our economy and to create jobs in America.”

Created as part of last month’s debt-ceiling package, the 12-member supercommittee is required to identify at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, or $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts will kick in. The panel’s deadline is Nov. 23.

To represent House Democrats, Pelosi chose three close allies: Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Xavier Becerra (Calif.).

Pelosi said her caucus has been encouraged by President Obama’s decision to essentially bypass his Republican critics in an attempt to sell the Democrats’ message to voters directly.

“The president has put down his markers and is taking it on the road,” Pelosi said.