Chris Matthews: Pelosi Was 'Strongest House Speaker' in 50 Years

Bias knows no bounds, especially when it comes to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. The Hardball host, who seems to drop a new jaw-dropping bombshell near daily, now asserts that there hasn't been a "stronger" House Speaker in the last 50 years than Nancy Pelosi.

NewsBusters points out that Pelosi was House Speaker during one of the nation's worst recessions in decades, causing unemployment rates to double and the debt to increase by 61 percent.

Matthews stated: "There's never been a stronger speaker, I think, since Sam Rayburn than the speaker -- just recently was speaker. That's Nancy Pelosi."

NewsBusters continues:

Consider that the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent when Pelosi was sworn in back in January 2007. When she gave up the gavel four years later, the rate was a staggering 9.4 percent with over 8.5 million more people out of work.

Let's understand that the economy was booming when the Democrats and Pelosi took over Congress in 2007. By the end of their first year in charge, a recession began that many claim to be the worst since the Great Depression.

But that's not Pelosi's only "accomplishment." The budget deficit before she became Speaker was a mere $160 billion. When she stepped down, the deficit had increased tenfold to an almost unthinkable $1.6 trillion.

The total federal debt when Pelosi was given the gavel was $8.7 trillion. When she handed it over to current Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.), the debt had increased 61 percent to $14 trillion.