Transcript of Press Conference on Building a Better America

New York City – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries, Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez, Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke and members of the New York City labor community to discuss investing in our nation's infrastructure. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Yvette, for acknowledging that's why I have on a coat and you – the three of you do not, because I'm from California.

But I am very happy to be here, once again, in Brooklyn. I was here last night, so this is not – I'm going to the Bronx later today, because we're talking about, thanking New York for the contribution you all make and the leadership that you send to the Congress. The Chair of our House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries, a great leader in the Congress of the United States. Thank you for sending him there.

[Applause]

As was mentioned, Nydia Velázquez: not only the Chair of the, of the Small Business Committee – which would be reason enough to celebrate her leadership in the Congress – but very high up in the Financial Services Committee, where she worked for consumers as well as small businesses on that Committee as well. And as Yvette Clarke mentioned, she's on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

This piece that she emphasized about broadband is very, very important, because when we're talking about workforce development and so many other aspects of America's working families, that has made a tremendous difference. She was very important in the whole bill, but especially that part that came under her Committee.

I associate myself with the remarks that they've all made because they've gone to the point – but I just want to make a point about these New York Representatives, all of them here. New York, in this bill, gets $11.6 billion – $11.6 billion to repair highways. $9.8 billion to improve public transit. $1.9 billion to fish – fix and replace bridges. And $685 million to upgrade airports. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of jobs. And you know what? Davis-Bacon. Davis-Bacon.

[Applause]

What we're talking about – my colleagues are talking about some of the specifics in the bill. I wanted to give you some process to – this is, that's not all of the money, but that's just a sample of what's in there for the State of New York. And when we're doing this, what are we doing? We're improving the quality of our infrastructure. The quality of our infrastructure is about the safety of our infrastructure. So this is a safety issue. When we're doing this investment in infrastructure, we're improving the quality of life for people: shorter time in cars, less pollution in the air. We're improving the health of our children when we're building infrastructure. So it's about the quality of life, the quality of our infrastructure.

It's also about the quality of our fairness. As was mentioned, this is about justice in how we build – environmental justice, also, justice. The President has 40 percent equity – justice in the legislation so that we're not, as we're building, intensifying injustices but removing them. It's a remarkable bill because it's not only built on the infrastructure needs, but it's built on justice and fairness and values. It's quite remarkable.

It's quite remarkable, but it's not all. We have more to do, and we're going to do that as we address the climate issues. Those are good-paying jobs, construction jobs as well, and they will be – Davis-Bacon, a prevailing wage. Davis-Bacon as well.

As the distinguished Chairman mentioned, and others alluded to, the previous President talked about infrastructure all the time, but never wanted to make the important decisions or pay for it. This legislation is paid for. So again, we are not only creating the jobs of construction, but the jobs that are generated from moving commerce, promoting commerce, moving people to and from work, product to and – to the marketplace. So it's not only the jobs in the here and now; it's the jobs that will be generated by all of it. And part of it all is the workforce development that goes with it. Part of that tied to broadband, part of it tied to apprenticeship programs, and our unions. Our labor, our –

[Applause]

I've been to their – around the country, I've been to, for example, the training center in Las Vegas, as a carpenter. I've met with the women in drywall there –

[Applause]

We want women in these jobs as well, and what we'll do in our next bill is to ensure that many more women have the opportunity, because of improvements in child – lowering the cost of child care and affording people the opportunity to have health care at home, so that moms and dads can be at work, and universal pre-K and all the things that enable many more women to take their rightful place in the building trades, as we have some leaders here now doing.

So it is – to be here at the Brooklyn Bridge, I mean, it is an icon in our country. It is a pioneer. It is, again, a suspension bridge unmatched in the world, unsurpassed. And it's also something that many people have bought over and over again. How many times did they say they were going to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge? Why? Because it's so beautiful. And who would not want to own it?

But the point of it is, how it was built. Imagine. Imagine the skill, the courage, the imagination, to build that bridge – what, 135 years ago? Something like that. Something so remarkable. But our bridges across the country, tens of thousands of them, are in disrepair. And we had to bring the money home to repair them. Again, so that they can be sustained, but also so they can be saved. So this is about safety. It's about economic growth. It's about respecting workers. It's about engaging women and minorities more in the workforce with workforce development. This is really a cause for celebration.

And I'll just close by saying this one thing. Did I say I was going to close before? Well, I'm going to close again.

This would not have happened without the outside mobilization. We could do just so much in our inside maneuvering. Our great President, having a vision, having a great vision, but you still have to get the bill passed. And you had to do this in a bipartisan way. So I thank our friends from union movements –

[Applause]

– because their outside mobilization, in a bipartisan way, was very important to passing all of this. So again, this is a great moment and I'm so happy that we're here in Brooklyn to celebrate it with these distinguished leaders in the Congress, our distinguished Chair Hakeem Jeffries, Madam Chair of the Small Business Committee, Nydia Velázquez – I just was with her for her birthday, yesterday. Well, her birthday is not for another week or two, but we celebrated. We've been celebrating it for a while now. And of course, Yvette Clarke, a force in the Congress. Again, it's great to be in Brooklyn.

I know that my colleagues would like to take any difficult questions you may have from the press. But once again, let us recognize it's about justice, it's about safety, it's about quality of life, it's about prevailing wages.

***

Q. Why is President Zelensky speaking before Congress? What do you expect to hear from him? And shouldn't the U.S. do more to help Ukraine?

Speaker Pelosi. Let me – I'll come back to that. As you're indicating, this morning Chuck Schumer and I sent out a letter to the Members to say that on Wednesday morning, we will have an address by President Zelensky to the full Congress, House and Senate. He won't be there, but he will – he will video into us. And he will tell us what else he probably would like us – I have some indication of this. He asked me for this meeting when I spoke to him the end of last week. And this is what we'll be having. We're thrilled. It's such a privilege to have this leader of this country, where these people are fighting for their democracy and our democracy. They're fighting for democracy writ large, because the assault that the beast Putin has been foisting on those people, the acts of bombing maternity wards – outside the circle of civilized human behavior. So, we'll see what he has to say.

But we – in this bill we passed and the President will sign tomorrow, in the omnibus bill, bipartisan bill – with over $13 billion in our next installment of assistance to Ukraine, which will be about humanitarian assistance, about military and defense assistance and about economic assistance. We'll have to do more in terms of meeting the needs of some of the 2.7 million refugees now. 2.7 million – so, it's a number that is almost incomprehensible and not finished yet. Sad to say. So this – it's going to be – I don't know if you've seen your phones yet, but we just sent out that letter extending that opportunity for us. It will be a privilege for us to hear from this champion of democracy.

I just want to go back for a moment to the question. When we did the infrastructure bill, and it's a very important piece of legislation, President Biden said: ‘I want to do everything we can in a bipartisan way. But I cannot confine my vision for America to what we can just do in that bill.' And that's why we have to get some more done in a form of a reconciliation bill, which just requires 51 votes in the [Senate]. And what – how does that all come together here? As Congresswoman Velázquez said, this is about saving our planet. You had Sandy – there's so many natural disasters. We have fires in California, hurricanes in, again, in the South, but that have reached here. We have to build the infrastructure – deal with the climate issue. And those are important construction jobs for us. Important union jobs for us. And as we do – as we do things that relate to electric cars, and different ways that we shape our highways, in preparation for that, it's all kinds of union jobs involved in that as well.

But we do have to do more. We always talk about helping people survive very well. Survival because of COVID and the rest, all the more important. But we want more than survival. We want success for people. And so this – these next stages of legislation, if we don't get the whole thing, we'll get – we'll make a big advance in taking people's – ensuring their survival, a pathway to their success.

In order for that to happen, certain things have to be transformative. And that is – are the issues about lowering health care costs, making health care more – child care costs, making health care more affordable, having home health care, and unionized, by the way, as well. So there's so much more that needs to be done to meet the needs, the kitchen table needs of America's working families. Kitchen table needs are exactly what keep people up at night. How are they going to pay the bills, the rent, the schools, the – just so much. So we're very excited about it, because this is our purpose. This is why we are there: for America's working families. And we don't work very hard to get a job done, unless it is advancing. As I said, we wouldn't think of doing an infrastructure bill unless it was Davis-Bacon, unless it was environmental justice in it, unless there was fairness in it.

So, again, we thank our outside mobilizers, who, weighing in, in the public domain, in the Congressional arena, made all of this possible as well. This will continue to unfold.

Q. Madam Speaker –

Chairman Jeffries. Last question, last question.

Q. Can you talk about – there was – what – supposed to be what $15 billion in – the White House requested in omnibus last week going to coronavirus testing, the Administration's ability to continue to respond to the virus is impressive. Can you talk about what the next steps are in getting that funding? Are you going to try and come back at that quickly? Will the number be lowered? How can you resolve the issues that were raised in paying for that?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, let me just say, thank you for that question. Our colleagues, all of us, have worked very hard on the COVID as Mr. Chairman has said. Hundreds of millions of vaccines in people's arms, money in people's pockets. We talked about childhood poverty – again, children back in school, workers back to work – save you.

But not everybody has been touched in a positive way. People – I just heard from the weekend, three of our colleagues have it and President Obama. So there's a fear that some people have about going back to work, if they have a small child who's not old enough for a vaccine yet or senior who has a pre-existing condition in their home, or themselves.

So we – the President has this important pivot, and it's to meet the needs of those who still have those needs, but also to enable people to go back to work, back to school, and to get back to as close to normal as possible.

The – we, in the proposal that we had, it covered two bases. One base was that – Republicans did not really want to do COVID. Some of us did not want to do COVID unless it was paid for. And we're big on paying. I'm a big ‘pay as you go' person, much to the dismay of some of my colleagues. And so this was a bill that said half of the bill would be paid for by state funds and half of it – not local, not local. We protected local, because the Senate Republicans wanted to take that money. And the other half would be for offsets. Some of the Members from states that would have – all the states would have a little bit. People are getting billions of dollars – states are getting billions of dollars. We're taking a small percentage to pay for this pivot. So half paid for that, half paid for the other.

I was very disappointed, I have to say. I mean, I usually would not say that to you. But this is the President's pivotal plan. We'll have to get it done. And we'll – it would be my hope that we could bring up a bill this week that would do at least part of that. But we shouldn't even have to have this challenge, in my view.