“And we did all of this while restoring fiscal discipline to the Congress by making the pay-as-you-go rules the law of the land.”

–—House Speaker, soon to be Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi in a Nov. 9 op-ed in USA Today, listing the achievements of the Democratic Congress under her leadership.

The pay-as-you-go rules, which require new spending  to be offset with new revenue or spending cuts, were adopted by the House in 2007 and became law in 2010. Significantly, the very same bill that established pay-as-you-go—or PAYGO—raised the debt limit by $1.9 trillion. Signed into law on Feb. 12,  PAYGO was waived less than two weeks later when the Senate voted for a $15 billion job creation bill.…that was not offset by new revenue or spending reductions.

In fact, the PAYGO rule is waived constantly: it was designed that way. Continue reading →