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So, Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats no longer think that stimulus is a helpful word to use, and are quietly retiring it from their vocabulary. 

It's interesting. The word stimulus denotes something that kicks off a larger action, like a spur digging into a horse's flesh to cause it to gallop. 

In 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was debated and passed, the Obama team and the Democrats tried to sell the bill by using similar metaphors, e.g., that it would "prime the pump" of the economy, or "kickstart" the jobs engine. 

Two years later, the metaphors are gone, and stimulus is a "radioactive word," according to The Hill. Now, when Democrats want to defend the stimulus, they skip the metaphors and instead make the unfalsifiable claim that the country would have lurched into another Great Depression without the stimulus, and that we should be thankful to the stimulus for the economic growth that we do have. They abandoned the idea that the stimulus could stimulate the economy long ago. 

Update: 

That article from The Hill also includes this Democratic talking points Mad Libs from Rep. George Miller of California: 

"We have tried shrinking the economy and sowing economic uncertainty for 8 months now, and it has failed. It's time for job creation and economic growth as our first order of business to strengthen our middle class."

My response: we haven't shrunk the economy enough. Congress should have tried to decrease GDP by $1.5 trillion.