At POLITICO Playbook Breakfast, Leader Pelosi Details Democrats' A Better Deal Economic Agenda
Leader Pelosi also voiced her opposition to Republicans' proposed Rescissions Package which shamefully takes $7 billion away from 9 million families.
Below are the highlights.
On A Better Deal, Democrats' Bold Economic Policy Platform
"A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Pay, Better Future. And that includes lowering costs for families, in terms of prescriptions drugs which we have been talking about for years. And now the President may say something. We welcome him to the conversation."
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"The unemployment rate is low – so is the pay. We're seeing stagnation in wages and that's why we're saying, ‘Better Pay.' And that is part of all of this, because you cannot really turn the economy around with prosperity for all Americans unless you pay people what they deserve. And for all these years, for whatever reason, there's been stagnation in wages."
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"Consumer confidence is the biggest builder of a great economy, instead of trickle-down economics which has never created jobs, it's only increased the deficit and not created jobs."
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"Of course, I'm for the fight for $15, to raise our minimum wage to $15 per an hour. When we did our 6 for '06, one of the first Bills we did was to raise the minimum wage and that was 2007. It's long overdue that we do that again."
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"It's not only about increasing the paycheck, it's about lowering the costs. Lowering the cost for prescription drugs, which was one of our six for '06. It was the only one that didn't become law. We couldn't get the 60 votes in the Senate. … But it's still necessary. Give the Secretary the authority to negotiate for lower prices. Put a big transparency spotlight on price gouging and why these increases are so incredible."
On Democrats' Legislative Priorities Following the Midterm Election
"It comes down to an economic message. There has to be an economic message. The financial instability of America's families is something that needs to be addressed."
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"It would contain a big infrastructure bill from the start. Is that something we'd like to do between now and the election? Yes."
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"There's some things I'd hope would happen before the election so that we'd be saving lives and people, and one of those would be common sense gun safety. Our background check bill, I'd hope we could do that now. We'd be hard put to call on the Speaker to do it, and then when we win not do it. Same thing with the Dreamers, I'd hope we'd get that done before – I'd like to take all these issues and have – infrastructure, all of it. It's always been bipartisan, all of these things have to be bipartisan. We've always had infrastructure as a bipartisan issue, the gun issue has bipartisan support, the Dreamers have bipartisan support. We could do those now."
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"This isn't even about politics anymore. It's about America. It's about our country. It's about fighting the dismantling of our institutions [and] undermining our democracy and also having a system of checks and balances, honoring the values of our Founders"
On Republicans' Rescissions Package that Would Attack Children's Health Care
"I don't know who was doing the timing a the White House but on the very same day that the First Lady very sincerely came out to do her presentation about her interest in children, the White House came out and said they're taking $7 billion dollars out of a program that addresses the needs of 9 million children in our country. And on the same day that the Justice Department announced that they were going to separate children that were coming into our country."
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"In terms of values, the budget is the reflection of values. You can talk all you want about this that or the other thing but where you make your investment is where you make your statement about what is important to you as a nation."
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"I think the more visibility this has, the less chance it has to succeed."