Nancy Pelosi: Reckless Republicans are to blame for this economic catastrophe

When was the last time anyone ever asked you for $700 billion?

It's a staggering number. But only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness. When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton's surpluses – four years in a row, budget surpluses, on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned that around.

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And now eight years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything-goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today.

[Republicans] claim to be free market advocates, when it's really an anything-goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you have a golden parachute, and the taxpayer bails you out.

Those days are over. The party is over in that respect. Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth. But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged by the Republicans – some in the Republican Party, not all – it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos.

Let's get this straight. We have a situation where on Wall Street people are flying high, they are making unconscionable amounts of money. They make a lot of money, they privatise the gain; the minute things go tough, they nationalise the risk. They get a golden parachute as they drive their firm into the ground, and the American people have to pick up the tab. Something is very, very wrong with this picture.

But it just comes down to one simple thing. They have described a precipice. We are on the brink of doing something that might pull us back from that precipice. This is a bipartisan initiative that we are bringing to the floor. We have to have a bipartisan vote on this. That is the only message that will send a message of confidence to the markets. I know that we will be able to live up to our side of the bargain. I hope the Republicans will, too... And before long we will have a new Congress, a new president of the United States, and we will be able to take our country in a new direction.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, was speaking before the bailout vote on Monday