Transcript of Speaker Pelosi’s Remarks at Weekly Press Conference

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi held her weekly press conference today in the Capitol Visitor Center. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Good morning.

My apology for running a little bit late. We have an intense legislative schedule – usual, but some of it is more so today. We have the insulin bill coming up on the Floor – we're very proud of that. We have the MORE legislation. But at the same time, we're preparing for the COMPETES Act, and last night we took our first – our most recent step. Today, we'll have the Republican Motion To Instruct, which is the right of the Minority. At the same time, we are preparing for and actually taking up the COMPETES Act. So there are all kinds of things happening at once.

At the same time, though, I have to say: it's with great sadness that we say goodbye to Don Young, our Dean, a Member who served 49 years in the Congress – 49 years in the 49th State. So beautifully acclaimed at his service the other day. And then – it was shocking to learn that he had passed. He wasn't sick. He just went to heaven.

And then Madeleine Albright – she had been sick the last few months. And that was a terrible loss for her: a great patriot, the first woman Secretary of State. She made us all so proud about her commitment to the national security of our country. Especially now – learning from her right up until the end, about her experience coming to the United States as a refugee and seeing what's happening in Ukraine and all these refugees coming.

So for us, one staunch Republican leaving us, someone beloved in our Congress. And she wasn't really a partisan person, but she was a Democrat – Madeleine – and we miss her terribly.

So in terms of the insulin bill, we're really very, very excited about that. Americans pay over ten times for insulin than people in other countries. This is an essential to people with diabetes, and it is – it's going to cap the cost of insulin at $35 per month, making a very big difference to America's families. This is a kitchen-table issue: are people going to be able to pay their bills?

And it is for us a step in the direction of the Secretary being able to negotiate for lower drug prices beyond insulin. But the insulin is – one in four Americans [with diabetes] is forced to skip or ration doses of insulin, and that's life-threatening. Our bill requires Medicare and insurers to cover insulin on their plans and cap the cost to families on the private side to $35 per month. Again, it paves the way to further action on prescription drugs.

The MORE Act that is on the Floor today – more of it on the Floor today. It's a major criminal reform bill that helps end the racial and economic injustice of marijuana criminalization. We're very proud of the work that has gone into it, and we would hope that it has support in the Senate. It's something that Senator Booker has been working on – their version – for a while. It's what – some of what is in this bill stood in the way of our getting the George Floyd [bill], because there were some in the Senate who wanted the aspects of this bill to be in the George Floyd bill.

So in any event, it's about justice, and that's what our President is – he's about justice, he's about equity. Whether we're talking about health care, whether we're talking about justice in the criminal justice system, whether we're talking about environmental justice. Any subject that you can name, this President had been very, very committed to justice in the system.

Right now – and, again, part of that justice is lowering cost. Right now, of course, we have the Putin Price Hike at the pump, and it is something that has to be addressed. The price of oil and gas at the pump started going up when he started circling Ukraine and Kyiv, and it is – well, even before he went in, as he showed his intentions. But it's beyond that, too. There is interest in our Caucus in stopping price gouging on the part of the industry. It's about passing on whatever we might pass to alleviate the price at the pump to the consumer. It's about ‘use it or lose it' in terms of the about nine thousand wells, licenses or permits that are there for the private sector to produce more oil domestically. So there's an array of issues.

The President will be making his statement later, consistent with many of the things that I have been hearing from our Members. You know that the SPRO is already in the public domain, and he'll be making others. But again, it is, it comes back to the subject of lowering cost. So lowering cost at a time of inflation is a reality that must be faced and must be addressed and must be lowered. One place is at the pump.

Another place is just the fact that we – the President, with the increase of a million jobs. I don't think any President would say that he, himself, made that happen. Of course, it's the public policy that we're engaged in made it happen, but the private sector made it happen, too. A million jobs – which means that unemployment went down, practically cut in half. And when that happens, inflation increases. I've told you before: when I was a new Member of Congress and the Chairman of the Fed said, "Unemployment is dangerously low. It's going to increase inflation. It's the way it is. But nonetheless, we have to recognize that."

Another cause, of course, is COVID, and COVID, COVID, COVID. We have many reasons to address COVID, but one of them is to recognize the shortage of supply, the supply challenge that we have in so many respects. And one of the things we are doing in that regard is passing the COMPETES Act, increase supply to lower cost. It's pretty exciting.

You've heard me talk about it before. We'll have over $50 billion committed to manufacturing chips. A thousand chips in a car; two thousand chips in an electric car. It's pretty exciting: chips and semiconductors. Another, over $40 billion to address the supply chain challenges that we have, bringing supply back to our shore or nearshoring them. And the research and education pieces of it. Again, justice – to have many more people participate in the new aspects of our independence, of this President declaring our independence, our self‑sufficiency, because we are making more in the USA. And so that's pretty exciting.

But that's – it's a very extensive bill. We have much in common with the Senate – some not – and we are preparing to go to conference with that. And again, as I mentioned, the Motion To Instruct will be on the Floor later today on the Republican side, and then next week we'll start appointing conferees to that. So for these and other reasons, it's an exciting time.

I would just close by saying: yesterday I had the honor of a visit from – to the Speaker's Office – five Members of Parliament, women Members of Parliament from the Ukraine, accompanied by Ambassador Markarova, whom you all know her. I mean, many of you have seen her here, but she brought five Members of the Parliament who are women. These women are young. They have children. One child was two, another eight years old – small children. Their husbands, in large measure, on the battlefield fighting there. But they thought it was important to come to the United States to tell the American people what – how they see it from there. They're going on to Canada after that. I had them in with the Members – of our Members, women Members – but also the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. It was factual, inspiring, emotional, a sense of urgency that you all are aware of. The President of Ukraine has made it clear.

But to hear the stories of the children – you know, the children are my reason to be here. When some of these parents are killed by the Russians, the children are sent to Russia. How about that? And I think we should get more evidence and documentation about that crime against humanity that the Russians are committing to the children – in some cases with a parent, in some cases not.

So again, we pray for the people of Ukraine. We're inspired by their courage and instructed by their President.

And I say in closing – did I say in closing once? I am so proud of our President: the leadership he has provided, not in calling the shots but working together. Working together with our allies in NATO – and others outside NATO – for unity against the Russian unlawful assault on a sovereign country, not respecting its borders and harming its people.

Any questions?

***

Q. Madam Speaker?

Speaker Pelosi. Yes, ma'am.

Q. Madam Speaker, thank you so much. On COVID relief, some Senate Republicans have suggested that the package could drop down to $10 billion, putting billions of dollars for global COVID vaccines on the chopping block. Would that compromise be acceptable to you? And are you confident that this could get done by Easter recess?

Speaker Pelosi. I think what the Republicans are doing is – they don't care or they don't know, but it is wrong. We must honor our – of course, we had a bigger package, and it was cut back to fifteen. That five, that they said: ‘So what? Stop the world; I want to get off.' That's who they are. You don't know that, but that used to be a play.

And how can we say – we have said, we have pronounced, everyone knows none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. By the way, this is not enough money. We're going to even need more money. But because of the – I'm an appropriator, as you know, so that's my orientation: in Appropriations and Intelligence. And appropriators, left to their own devices, can get this done, and they have ways of doing it that is paid for. We agree it should be paid for. But they will not accept the pay‑fors that had been traditional, traditional, in using budget outlays and the rest.

This is shameful. We have to get the money. It's not going to last us past probably June 1st. So for them to just – I mean, they're making statements saying, ‘This is not – we don't see this as a problem.'

It's a problem. It's a shame.

Q. Madam Speaker?

Speaker Pelosi. Yes, Chad.

Q. Good morning. Thank you. We're going to have this bill on the Floor soon about cannabis, legalization of cannabis.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

Q. As a mother and a grandmother, how do you feel about that? What are the concerns that other parents might have about this bill? I understand the merits of this, but what are the potential problems when some medical experts talk about the issues and social issues connected with this?

Speaker Pelosi. This is the decriminalization of it. It's the decriminalization of it. And the fact is, is many states have already done that. And so this is consistent with what is happening in many states across the country. And it also addresses the injustices of it because of what penalties had been before some of these, this decriminalization took place. So I'm all for it.

Look, there are so many discussions that have gone on over the years about the use of marijuana or cannabis or whatever. The fact is, it exists, it's being used, we've got to address how it is treated legally, and not in a way that mistreats people on the lower income scale – not says, ‘If you're wealthy, you can be engaged in all of this, but if you're not – there are barriers to your getting banking services in order to do it.' So it's a fact of life that needed appropriate public policy to address it.

Let me just see one of our regulars. Any regulars here? No.

[Laughter]

Q. Madam Speaker, on gas prices?

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah, okay.

Q. You laid out some solutions that would have a long‑term impact to bring gas prices down. But in terms of immediate relief for Americans in the short term, would you support the idea of something like gas checks, rebates, vouchers to Americans? And in that same vein, do you have concerns that if that were to happen that would cause inflation to go even higher?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, let's just say – first of all, the main question had been, do you support a gas tax holiday? And that is immediate, and it has appeal. People understand it. There's going to be a reduction in the gas tax. That's the pro. The con is that the oil companies do not necessarily pass that on to the consumer. They haven't in the past. And the – and so we're losing the money in the Highway Trust Fund because we've just taken that out. It goes to the oil companies. You cannot write a law – you cannot write a law that requires them to pass it on. That's just the way it is. We've tried every which way. You can have moral suasion. You could encourage. You can incentivize. You cannot require it.

So – okay, so we have a situation where there's money coming out of the Highway Trust Fund. It's going to the oil companies. They may not give it to the consumer. And it has to be paid for. So we're paying for something to give a break to the oil companies that isn't even going to the consumer. So that's the con.

The pro is very showbiz. Okay. ‘Let's just do something, there it is.' But it is not necessarily landing in the pocket of the consumer. It's taken out of the Trust Fund. We have to pay for that to return it. So that takes us to something else. How do you do that? Do you do it with a tax on production? You know, do you have the consumers pay for that? That is – so people are saying: ‘Well, how do we put the tax at the doorstep of the tax – ' So you took it to the right place: how do we help people directly? If you're going to have to pay for it and you don't want it to come out of the Trust Fund, one something could be a rebate card or a direct payment, and those are the things that are being considered.

But some of the things that looked appealing in the beginning to some – if this were my Caucus, one half of the room would say, ‘Let's go with that,' and the other half would say, ‘Well, wait a minute. It's not going – did you know it's not going to the consumer?'

So there are a number of approaches that are on the table. Are you going to have – let's hear what the President has to say today. That will be very important to us, what he has to say. He's going to talk about the SPRO to reduce it. He's going to talk about – well, we'll just hear what he has to say.

Yes, ma'am.

Q. Madam Speaker?

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

Q. On gas prices and what the President is going to say today, one of the things he is supposed to recommend is that Congress put fees on oil companies that don't utilize permits they already own. Is that something that you would support and implement here? And also, you're calling it the Putin gas hike, but oil prices – gas prices started rising a year ago. So is all of this to blame on Putin or are there others?

Speaker Pelosi. No, partially. I don't say it's all Putin, but it's partially. This is – that's not what I'm talking about. But anyway, here's the thing. When the President makes his statement, I will comment on his statement. Okay? So thank you very much for your advance knowledge of it, but I don't have that, and so I won't comment on it.

But I do – Putin definitely contributed to this gas hike. So I'm not saying it's all his, no, but it's largely his. So when we talk about this – gas prices, the price of oil went down from, what, $140 to $105. Have you seen it go down at the pump? It seems like it goes up when the price of oil goes up. It doesn't necessarily come down when it goes down. So to the first part of your question, there is – we have always said use it or lose it. Nine thousand permits exist for them to drill on land – onshore.

And one of the things that I would say is that we want to fight inflation. The price of oil is an indicator – the price of gas at the pump is an indicator. Putin has exacerbated it. But we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to use this as an excuse to reverse everything we're doing to save the planet. One of the things I think that the President may say – I don't have this as a fact – is that we will use the Defense Production Act to speed up diversification so that we're not so dependent on oil.

One of the encouraging – many of the meetings that we had at Munich with leaders in Europe, either heads of state or the EU countries coming together, was about diversification. Everybody knows security and energy are linked. If you're dependent on a country like Russia, your security depends on your having that energy, but it also is a risk to your security to have somebody like a Putin call your shot, A.

Secondly, in that regard, we are trying to supply as much as we can to backfill what people don't – would not get from Russia, should the countries decide they are not going to buy the oil from Russia. But what we heard that was so encouraging at all the meetings in Munich was diversification, diversification, diversification. We must stop being dependent on energy – not just oil, but other energy products from Russia. Same thing here: diversification.

So again, we have a short‑term problem. We have a long‑term opportunity. We want to reduce the cost of the price at the pump. We would hope that there would be some relationship between the price of oil coming down. The President releasing the million [barrels] a day of the SPRO for the next six months increases supply. Supply usually reduces cost. And now we'll just see how that is reflected.

It costs a lot of money in California. If you drive around in California and see the costs, you think: how could this be when the price of oil has been coming down?

So let's see what the President has to say. He's thought – they have been so careful about what really results in lowering the price for that kitchen table that he's so famous for being concerned about.

Q. Madam Speaker, do you believe – do you agree with Members of your Caucus who are saying that Clarence Thomas should resign?

Speaker Pelosi. I don't think he should have ever been appointed, so let me take it back to there.

The – thank you for your question. I'm not going to go to that. But I do – will say that in our H.R. 1, our bill to have cleaner government, we have a call for the Supreme Court to have a code of ethics. They have no code of ethics and – really? It's the Supreme Court of the United States. They're making judgments about the air we breathe and everything else, and we don't even know what their ethical standard is? So I would like to see that bill have a hearing – not the whole bill, but taking out that piece. We've already passed the whole bill, but to focus on the Supreme Court ethics standard legislation. I've talked to the Committee about perhaps having a hearing on that pretty soon so that the Justice – the Supreme Court has to at least have a code of ethics, A. And B, why should they have lower standards than Members of Congress in terms of reporting and the rest?

So you know, I hear people say from time to time: ‘Well, it's a personal decision of a judge as to whether he should recuse himself.' Well, if your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards.

Just one more. Jake?

Q. Just on the two issues you talked about, gas prices and the CHIPS, the innovation bill. What is your timeline?

Speaker Pelosi. Okay.

Q. When do you see those two coming together?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, mister – as you know, I'm very committee oriented, and there are some proposals that would have to go through the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Chairman would rather do the bills after they have the hearings, so –

Q. After they have the oil CEOs in, you mean, or after they have the hearing on the bill or –

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah, that would be one. I mean, I'm not telling you his plan, but I'm just saying I would infer from his statement that that would be one important date.

The – and then CHIPS are this. As I said today, the Senate did what they had to do. Then they send us the paper. We get it. We do what we do. We send it back to them today. They, at the beginning of next week, have their vote on have it go to conference, and then we start appointing conferees.

So we could have a first – well, depending – I can't answer for the Senate because next week they also, is my understanding, but I don't know this, just what I see in the local metropolitan journal, they may be doing the Supreme Court next week, Justice confirmation. So if that's the case, then, then – I don't know when this will come up there. But when they act, then we'll act, and we'll go to conference.

But we have always been working to – you know, what is it? Where do we have complete agreement? Where do we need some little reconciliation? Where do we have a big difference? Let's just – and we've been working on that for months. So we're ready. We're ready. Everybody wants to be on the conference, so we'll just have to see – excuse me – what the size, what the size of that is.

It's pretty exciting because, again, it's the America COMPETES Act of 2022. Whether that remains the name at the end of the day, who knows? But what is true is that it's about American – the COMPETES Act is about America being independent and self‑sufficient. And this is really a high priority for our President, and that's why when he talks about the Defense Production Act being implemented to make us less dependent on – well, really preparing us to save the planet, really. It happens to coincide with reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

But again, the immediate is to bring down that price. We want there to be no price gouging. We have other proposals that Members have that relate to having the industry pay for whatever we have to put out there to alleviate the fiscal – financial pain to America's working families.

But there are plenty of good ideas. And I'll have to go back to my day job. It was lovely to be with you.

Staff. Thank you. Thank you.

Q. Will you go to Poland or the Ukrainian border?

Staff. Thank you.

Q. Will you go to Poland or the Ukrainian border?

Staff. Thank you.

Speaker Pelosi. At some time.