by Newt Gingrich
We are watching the birth of the job-killing, ice cream-eating liberal Democratic Party.
After a week of blocking more money for American small businesses, Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided it would be effective to show up on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” to communicate her human side. It was a bizarre interview with the woman who had stopped $250 billion in aid for small businesses and their employees.
I served with three Democratic speakers of the house (Tip O’Neill, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley). It would be unthinkable for one of them to be as tone deaf as Pelosi was here. There she was, in front of her two Wolf Sub Zero refrigerator-freezers. Frankly, Callista knew what a Wolf Sub Zero refrigerator was, but I sure did not. I Googled it.
Wolf’s own description is: “Find the best luxury refrigerators for your needs with Sub Zero full-size stainless steel or custom panel refrigerators, freezers and undercounter refrigerators.” They range in price from $9,000 to $23,000 a piece.
So, while voting to starve small businesses, Pelosi wanted America to see her in front of “the best luxury refrigerator.” She then went a step further and explained, “and we just restocked the ice cream for Easter Sunday because we were, shall we say, enjoying – I don’t know what I would have done without ice cream.”
It was perfectly “progressive Democrat” of her to want us to share her pain when she was causing pain to millions of small business owners, their employees, and families. While many Americans were gathered around their Easter tables praying and wondering what they would do without income or a job, she was blocking small business support and wondering what she would have done without ice cream. By the way, you, too, can get the ice cream she was bragging about having delivered – five pints for $58 before tax.
The Marie Antoinette parallel is a little eerie. You may be pinching pennies and eating peanut butter and crackers, but her highness, the Princess of San Francisco, is smothering her anxieties at $11.60 a pint while making you go bankrupt.
James Woods tweeted: “Her two refrigerators cost together $24,000 for her specialty chocolate ice creams, but she hates the small business owners of America. Let them eat cake.”
What makes the Pelosi attitude so infuriating is the fact that the small business payroll protection plan has worked far better than anyone thought possible. The Small Business Administration working the nation’s banks has gotten $350 billion into the economy in 14 days. Before the Trump Administration, $30 billion in an entire year was a major SBA effort. Now, it had managed to loan $349 billion in two weeks.
The Wall Street Journal captured the current reality on April 16:
“For seven long days, Democrats have been blocking a $250 billion refill for the Paycheck Protection Program, and on Thursday morning the loan fund finally ran out of money. ‘Every Senate Republican was ready to act today,’ Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. ‘But Democrats would not let us reopen the program.’
“On Thursday the Labor Department said another 5.2 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week. That brings the total in four weeks to a mind-bending 22 million. The Paycheck Protection Program is meant to blunt this trauma, and so far it has approved 1.6 million forgivable loans to small businesses. The idea is to keep companies stable amid the pandemic, so they can retain workers. Without this cash infusion, it’s hard to fathom how much worse the economic data might look. …
“The longer Democrats refuse to provide financing for small businesses after government cut off their revenue, the more Americans will have every right to conclude that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer are responsible for the worsening economic destruction.”
Even a knowledgeable Democrat thought Pelosi was profoundly wrong. As Jim Saksa reported in RollCall:
“Karen G. Mills, who led the Small Business Administration during President Barack Obama’s first term, has a message for top Capitol Hill Democrats: Refill the so-called Paycheck Protection Program’s coffers now and ask questions later.
“The SBA program, established as part of the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 aid package to help battered small businesses, ran out of cash to make new loans on Thursday morning, barely two weeks after it began taking applications.
“’Congress has to act as soon as possible,’ Mills told CQ Roll Call in an interview Thursday, adding that she’s spoken recently with Democratic senators and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. ‘What I’m saying is: Number one, get the money replenished.’”
The Washington Free Beacon also captured the trap the Democrats were drifting into when it said we are entering “the Pelosi Recession.”
A few more Pelosi ice cream-eating, luxurious lifestyle appearances while she’s killing small business will make the election this fall a referendum on “the Job-Killing, Ice Creaming-Eating Liberal Democrats.” This will be a hard argument for Pelosi and the Democrats to win.
Further, in the midst of this crisis of the economy, small business, and unemployment, where is Joe Biden? Does he support the job-killing, ice cream-eating liberal Democrats? If he does not, when is he going to speak out?
The case is being made for a deep repudiation of an elite Democratic Party that now has total contempt for Americans.
