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Press Releases Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami 202-226-7616 For Immediate Release 10/30/2008 Pelosi Statement on U.S. Economy Shrinking in Third Quarter Washington, D.C. — Speaker Nancy Pelosi today issued the following statement on third quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers, which shrank at a 0.3 percent annual rate in the July-September, marking the worst showing since the 2001 recession, and weekly applications for unemployment benefits, which remained at 478,000, near an all time high. “Today’s GDP news and jobless claims report confirm what Americans already know: that our nation’s economy is shrinking; consumers are not spending; and businesses are producing fewer...

A Dire Emergency. That is what they told us. And even with full control of the Congress, the support of a lame duck president, his Treasury Secretary, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Nancy Pelosi failed to pass this EMERGENCY legislation. The Bailout bill failed by a vote of 207-226, with 94 Democrats voting against it. She needed to persuade 10 Democrats to join their own leadership, and the bill would have passed. It is a catastrophic failure of leadership of a Congress with a 9% approval rating.

For at least at least a year, Americans struggling to pay record gasoline, heating oil and natural-gas prices have begged Congress to permit energy exploration off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts, where 80 percent of the nation's known energy reserves sit just waiting to be tapped. But every time Congress had a chance to lift its moratorium on offshore drilling, Democrats and liberal Republicans told consumers to stop their whining. But with the public now solidly behind more drilling and with the congressional elections just seven weeks off, House Democrats found themselves between a rock — voters — and...

The president again pinned the prospect of oil drilling off the coastline — considered a long-term energy solution — to today's high gas prices for consumers. "The American people are rightly frustrated by the failure of the Democratic leaders in Congress to enact commonsense solutions," the president said. Bush acknowledged that development of oil resources in waters off the coastlines, an area known as the Outer Continental Shelf, would take time. But he said that only creates more urgency for Congress to lift its legislative ban on drilling in these protected waters before lawmakers leave Washington for summer break.

Last update: 2:06 p.m. EDT July 30, 2008 WASHINGTON, July 30, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to remarks by President Bush on energy this morning at the White House: "The President knows, as his own Administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant - promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road. Americans know that thanks to the two oilmen in the White House, consumers are now paying $4 a gallon for gas. But what Americans should realize is that what...