Transcript of House Democratic Leadership Press Conference

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders held a press conference today to discuss House Democrats' commitment to job creation, strengthening the middle class, and deficit reduction.  Below is a transcript of the press conference:

Speaker Pelosi.  Good morning.  As you know, tomorrow the 112th Congress will be called to order.  House Democrats will keep our focus on the creation of jobs, putting the American people to work.  We will measure every policy from both parties, as it comes forth, as to whether it creates jobs, whether it strengthens the middle class, and whether it reduces the deficit instead of heaping mountains of debt onto our children and grandchildren.

We pledge to work together with our Republican colleagues to address the challenges facing America's working families.  We must solve their problems.  And when the suggestions put forth are problem solvers to the American people, the Republicans will find in the Democrats willing partners.

Some focus has been made, as we know, to keep job creation front and center.  House Democrats will continue to protect the gains we have made on behalf of health and economic security for the American people, both in terms of the health reform bill and the Wall Street reform bill, both of which gives leverage to America's working families.

Our health reform law created, for the first time, a Patients' Bill of Rights, placing health care decisions in the hands of patients and their doctors, not insurance companies.  We will work to ensure that children with pre-existing conditions can continue to get coverage, young people can stay on their parents' plan until age 26, and pregnant women and breast and prostate cancer patients can no longer be thrown off the insurance rolls, as some examples of what can happen.  In order to have a Patients' Bill of Rights, though, it is important to have comprehensive health care reform.

Leading our efforts within our caucus, I am very pleased today to be with our Democratic Leader of the House, Steny Hoyer, with some of the Members who are here, the members of the leadership--Chris Van Hollen, the Ranking Member now on the Budget Committee; Chair of the Steering Committee, Rosa DeLauro, who works with Congressman George Miller as Co-Chair of that committee; Rob Andrews, who has given us the master class on many issues facing the Congress, including health care.

I am pleased to be announcing today expanded roles for two of our Members.  As you may recall, before we left for the break, I announced that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Congressman Henry Cuellar would be vice chairs of the Steering and Policy Committee.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as you know, has been a leader in the Congress on many fronts, a cardinal from day one when she went on to the Appropriations Committee.  Many of you know that means a leader on the committee, and she has been working very hard on behalf of America's working families.  Debbie will be leading the way, communicating with our Members and with the press on our Democratic priorities of job creation, deficit reduction and strengthening the middle class.

Henry Cuellar has been a leader in terms of deficit reduction in the Congress.  I am very proud of his ongoing work in that regard.  He will be working in that way as we develop our priorities and we go forward.  One of the last bills we passed on the floor that Mr. Hoyer brought to the floor was Mr. Cuellar's legislation for procurement.  It was the greatest procurement reform since the early 1990s.  Mr. Cuellar was dogged in pursuit of passing that legislation.  That has long been a priority for our Blue Dog Caucus and for our entire Democratic Caucus.  I salute him for that and look forward to his expanded role in deficit reduction; procurement reform; ending waste, fraud and abuse; and making the right values decisions as we go forward to create jobs, reduce the deficit and to protect the middle class.

With their leadership, the Democrats will present a strong message to the American people, putting jobs first, ensuring a thriving middle class, and being fiscally responsible as we do so.

So now it is my pleasure to turn this meeting over to a real star in the House Democratic Caucus, a person who has the confidence of her colleagues and respect of her constituents and the American people, the new vice chair of the Steering and Policy Committee, with special responsibilities for communicating with each and every one of you, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  Thank you so much.  Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for giving me this important responsibility.  I look forward to making sure that all of us are able to work together on effectively communicating Democratic priorities both within and among our colleagues and across the country as we reach out to our constituents in our districts.

And as the Speaker said, indeed, the number one priority for our country is and continues to be creating jobs and turning this economy around.  And as such, as the Speaker mentioned, the Democratic yardstick that we will measure the Republican effort by will be the following:  Does it create jobs?  As she mentioned, does it strengthen America's middle class?  And does it reduce the deficit?

When Republicans put forward solutions that meet those three tests, then we are going to be standing ready to work with them.  Unfortunately, though, what we have been hearing so far from our Republican colleagues is something altogether different.  Instead of focusing on job creation, Republicans have signaled that their top priority is to repeal the health reform law that protects Americans from insurance company abuses and gives people more individual freedom.

Under the Republican repeal effort, insurance companies would once again be able to drop people when they get sick, exactly when coverage is needed most.  Children with preexisting conditions would be denied coverage, while insurance companies would again be able to impose devastating annual and lifetime caps.  Young people will not be able to stay on their parents' insurance until they are age 26.  Pregnant woman and breast cancer survivors could be denied coverage.

Seniors will face an increase in their prescription drug costs, millions thrown back into the Medicare Part D doughnut hole.  Repeal would deny seniors a 50 percent cut in their brand name prescription drugs, recreating the devastating coverage gap.

Plain and simple, repealing health care reform would hurt millions of Americans.  For instance, in south Florida, where I am from, a 19 year old teenager in Miami has lupus.  She takes expensive medications and has frequent hospital stays.  She is currently on her mom's health insurance.  However, without the health care reform law, she would soon become ineligible to remain on her mom's insurance and would be virtually uninsurable given her preexisting condition.  Now, because of health insurance reform, she can remain on her mom's insurance plan through age 26, and after that she will be able to purchase insurance in the exchange even though she has a preexisting condition.  That will provide her a bridge until she is 26 years old.

And it doesn't just mean benefits for people with chronic illnesses.  Recently I was in the grocery store, and a woman came up to me and literally put her hands on my shoulders and said, Debbie, thank you.  Thank you for passing health care reform.  You saved me $3,000 last year when I was able to put my two adult daughters back on my insurance plan.

That's what health care reform means for people, and that's what it would mean no longer if the Republicans are successful in their effort to repeal it.  Now, this year, thousands of my constituents on Medicare are going to receive three annual wellness visits and receive that 50 percent discount on brand name drugs.

Republicans' obsession with repealing health care reform is going to hurt real people, but it could also jeopardize our fragile economic recovery by spending countless hours trying to repeal health care reform rather than focusing on jobs, the economy and deficit reduction.  Every minute wasted on trying to repeal health care reform fruitlessly is one less minute the Republicans will spend on job creation and turning this economy around.  Fruitlessly trying to nick health care reform to death is going to take hundreds of hours of staff time, floor time and Member time.

We cannot take our eyes off the prize of continuing our economic recovery.  We are going to watch for every Republican hypocrisy and call them on it when we see it.

Thank you so much.  It is now my privilege to turn the podium over to my colleague and ally, Henry Cuellar.

Congressman Henry Cuellar.  Thank you very much, Debbie.  Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to serve as one of the vice chairs.  I want to thank the leadership here for all the work that they have done, because we did a lot in the last 4 years.

The well being of our economy and the debt, financial burden on our children and grandchildren is a problem that both parties must address now.  Reducing the deficit and the national debt, the deficit and the national debt, is not a partisan issue, it is a good idea.  A good idea is a good idea.

Our caucus will support good ideas no matter their origin, and we expect the new majority to do the same, the good ideas that we have established from PAYGO and other ideas we have established the last 4 years.  We must build on the recent passage of the bipartisan Government Efficiency, Effectiveness and Performance Act to shine a brighter light on government agencies and spending practices.  It is imperative that we aggressively examine all expenditures and increase transparency and accountability together, and we now have a statute or a bill that will be signed by the President to make sure that we do this in a way that we mentioned--not for political reasons--but we measure results, because this is what our taxpayers are asking us to do.

Let's talk about the debt.  If you recall the PAYGO that expired in the early 2000s, or about 10 years ago, our government, after it expired, our government took a fiscal U-turn, going from a $5.6 surplus built upon in the 1990s to a deficit of over $11 trillion.  Publicly held debt was $7.6 trillion in 2009 and will double over the next 10 years if action is not taken.  Foreign holding accounts for over 50 percent of the U.S. debt, with China, as an example, holding over $800 billion.  Government borrowing can lead to higher interest rates and make it more expensive for families to borrow money in order to purchase a home, finance an education or start a small business.

PAYGO--with the advocacy efforts of groups like the Blue Dogs, we reinstituted statutory PAYGO under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi.  This PAYGO rule is reining in spending so we do not have to rely on countries like China to pay for our priorities like education or transportation.  The proven bipartisan PAYGO rules effectively brought budget surpluses like we had in the 1990s.

Let me talk about this bill that we just passed, because I know that the Government Oversight is going to be doing a lot of work on how we spend money and how we do this.  But we have a statute or bill that we will be signing into statute that brings increased transparency and accountability.  Performance-based budgeting is a results oriented tool to set goals and performance targets for agencies, measure the results such as a small business does every day.

Agencies will now be subject to tough provisions and made accountable for the performance--not on political reasons, not on political reasons--but on the performance of their results.  These agencies, under this new bill, that underperform or are ineffective can face budget cuts or even elimination.  Again, performance and not political reasons.

But a word of caution.  As we aim to reduce the deficit and the national debt, we must be smart and still investing in the future of our country.  Education and transportation must still be priorities for us.

Thank you.  At this time I would like to have Mr. Hoyer approach.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.  Well, I will approach you.

Good morning.  This week we are beginning a new Congress.  We have finished the election cycle.  In that election cycle, it seemed to me there were two compelling messages, and those two compelling messages are we need jobs, and we need to grow jobs the economy; and the second message being we need to address the deficit and the debt.

Speaker Pelosi has asked two extraordinary Members of the Congress of the United States, one from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who, as the Speaker indicated, was a cardinal when we were in the majority, on the Appropriations Committee.  But more than that, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has traveled all over this country, has listened to people, listens to her constituents, whether they be in grocery stores taking her by the shoulders or anyplace else in this country, and she has heard their message, and she understands what we need to be doing in terms of focusing on jobs and growing the economy; in fact, making it in America, succeeding in America, and making it, manufacturing it in America.  She will be conveying that message not just to you, not just on the floor of the House of Representatives, but to the American people as well.

We still confront the challenges that were present during the course of the election.  We still are in the 9.5 plus percentage unemployment.  We need to get people back to work by growing the economy and focusing on jobs.  To the extent that our Republican colleagues do just that, they will find us willing partners to seek common ground so that the economy can continue, and I emphasize continue, to grow.

In fact, economists are saying that the programs put in place in the last Congress are, in fact, bearing fruit, not as quickly as we would have liked, but bearing fruit, and the economy is growing.  We now need to bring that jobs unemployment number down.

In November, the voters sent a strong message.  They want us to focus on those challenges and work together to solve them, and that's exactly what Democrats are committed to do.  Together we can work to strengthen American business, rebuild American manufacturing and its middle class jobs, and make the hard fiscal choices that are necessary to stave off crisis.

I fear, however, unfortunately, that the Rules package that the Republicans are going to be offering will make the deficit worse, not better.  It will explode the deficit, as has been the case in years past, and are attempting to change, as they did in the early 2000s, the PAYGO premise that you would pay for what you buy.  We will work with them when we are accomplishing the job creation objectives and the deficit reduction objectives; however, they will find us a loyal but focused and tenacious opposition when we are doing things that we think undermines our economy and explodes the deficit.  We will also work every day to hold Republicans accountable for the promises they have made to the American people.

Above all, we are proud to be the party of working people.  In the 30 days, approximately, of the lame duck session, we reached out to working people to make sure that they could succeed.  We reached out to those who are unemployed through no fault of their own and passed unemployment insurance.  We made sure, as we pledged we would do, that middle class working people did not get a tax increase this month, and they did not, so that we have continued our pledge to be the party of working people and of a bright future for our country.

We are headed in a direction that is positive.  We need to continue on that road, and I know that under the leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Henry Cuellar of Texas, who has been a strong proponent of fiscal responsibility, that we will be successful in that effort.

Again, I say to my Republican colleagues I congratulate Mr. Boehner on his victory and Mr. Cantor on his taking a title that I really liked having.  You can keep calling me that if you want, I won't object.  But I understand elections have consequences.

But the fact of the matter is that the American public wants to see progress, not division.  They want to see jobs, not simply political rhetoric.  They are not interested in just hearing about us reading the Constitution, as will be done on Thursday.  They are hopeful that we will accomplish what the Constitution envisions, and that was the betterment of the general welfare of all Americans.

So I congratulate the Speaker on the appointment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Henry Cuellar as vice chairs of our policy committee, joining George Miller and Rosa DeLauro, who co-chaired the policy committee, and making sure that we keep the faith with the American people who want to see a better America, a growing economy and a confidence in the future.

Thank you very much.

Speaker Pelosi.  Thank you very much, Mr. Leader.

I congratulate Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Henry Cuellar for their new responsibilities, thank them for their leadership, and we all look forward to working with them.  How proud we are of their leadership.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz from Florida, Henry Cuellar of the great State of Texas.

With that, all of the Members who are here, I would be pleased to take any questions you may have.

Q: Madam Speaker, you and the Leader and all of you talked a lot about jobs and the debt.  Do you have regrets that you didn't use the 2 years that you had total Democratic control of government to focus more on jobs and especially the debt, which we didn't hear much at all from you?

Speaker Pelosi.  No.  As a matter of fact, we, in the House of Representatives, have, on any number of occasions, set a very positive pace for jobs initiatives to the United States Senate, where they were held up by the Republicans in the Senate.  It is hard to believe that they might want not to cooperate when it was a question of creating jobs, whether it was jobs, building infrastructure, America with jobs related to a new green technology, to keep America competitive and number one.

So, no, we have no regrets.  This House has over and over again sent to the Senate legislation for jobs creation, which the Republicans in the Senate held up.

Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us.  It is our mantra: "Pay as you go."  Unfortunately, that will be changed now.

This administration and this Congress inherited a near depression, and so the initiatives that we took were positive to the American people.  It is not enough to save people from a depression, though; 9.5 percent unemployment is intolerable.  As long as we have that, we have to continue to fight for job creation.

Q: If I could follow up and ask you to look back on a personal note, maybe more reflective.  But this is your last day as Speaker, which obviously was an historic achievement, what that means for you and looking back about how it hits you personally?

Speaker Pelosi.  Well, that is a completely separate question.  Actually, I don't really look back, I look forward.  And we look forward to, as I said before, being a willing partner and solving the problems of the American people.  When our Republican colleagues have positive solutions, again, they will have a willing partner in solving problems for the American people.

I do join Mr. Hoyer in congratulating Speaker-to-be Boehner and the Republicans for their majority.  I wish them success.  I look forward to working with them, but that is the key, we look forward.

Q: Madam Speaker, you mentioned coverage of pre-existing conditions and health coverage for children and breast cancer.  Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz mentioned a lot of other parts of health care reform.  You didn't mention the individual mandate.  Is it negotiable?

Speaker Pelosi.  No, no, no.  What I did say in my comments, if you are going to have a Patients' Bill of Rights, you have to have comprehensive health care reform.  So sellers will say "Well, I support not having pre-existing conditions being a reason for loss of coverage."  But if you don't have comprehensive reform, you can't enforce it, otherwise you are just giving license to the insurance companies telling them to cover that and having them raise the rates through the roof.  So it all goes together.

Mr. Andrews, would you like to speak?

Congressman Rob Andrews.  If you want to guarantee the American people a massive increase in their health insurance premiums, then disrupt the basic health care reform that we passed and the President signed last year.

But the easy and unwise thing to do is to say that you are for covering people's preexisting conditions, but then not lay the foundation to have enough people in the insurance pools to prevent massive premium increases for the middle class.  So if the new majority wants to raise premiums on the middle class, no, we will not join them in that.

Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz.  Thank you.

It also talks about making the deficit reduction a priority, yet the first thing out of the gate they are planning to do is try to repeal health care reform, which explodes the deficit.  We get $142 billion in deficit reduction in the first 10 years and a trillion in deficit reduction in the second ten.

What we should be watching for, and what we are going to be watching for, is Republican hypocrisy, where they continue their meaningless, empty campaign rhetoric, which, when they get here and they are in charge now, they would back up with either the opposite of what they campaigned on or hypocritical policies.

Congressman Chris Van Hollen.  On that point if I could say, because this is going to come up tomorrow on the rule on the point that Debbie just raised with respect to health insurance.  They are going to employ budget gimmicks to try and hide the cost of their actions.  What they are going to do is engage in Enron type accounting to say that when they move to try to repeal health care a week from tomorrow, that the hit on the deficit will not matter.  They are going to try and magically make that go away as part of a rule.

That kind of flim flam is exactly what the American people came to expect the last time the Republicans were in charge.  They told the American people that they listened and learned, but in the rules package we are going to see tomorrow, it is going to be very clear that it is back to the same old games.  And Exhibit A is this provision in the rule that says we are not going to count the cost to the American people and the deficit of repealing health care reform.  We are just going to make it somehow magically disappear.

Congressman Cuellar.  Let me just mention, first of all, the first question about the jobs.  Keep in mind that December of 2008, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, and at this time we are actually increasing jobs.  So not everything happened January of 2009.  It actually started before that.

The other thing is I have a copy of the resolution that they will be looking at to instruct their committees to replace some of the health care.  But I look at it, and I was talking to Rob about it, and I will just mention a few of them.

One of the things--they are instructing their committees to lower health care premiums through increased competition choice.  We do that already.

Preserve the patient's ability to keep his or her health plan if he or she likes it.  We have that already in the health care bill.

Provide people with preexisting conditions access to affordable health coverage.  We have that already.

Coverage--increase the number of insured Americans.  We have that already.

Protect doctor patient relationship.  We have that already.

Provide States credit flexibility to administer Medicaid programs.  We have that already in law.

Expand incentives to encourage personal responsibility of that coverage.  We have that.

Prohibit taxpayers' funding of abortions and provide for health care.  We have that already.

Eliminate duplicative government programs and wasteful spending.  We surely have that already, because we were working on that.

Do not accelerate the insolvency of entitlement programs or increase tax burdens on Americans.  We just passed a tax reduction bill itself.

So, again, this is something we have already, but I guess this is an exercise we will be doing soon.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.  I will just make one comment.  Since everyone has spoken about this, I will as well.  But the fact is that this is nothing more--this repeal of health care by the Republicans is political theater.  It is a Kabuki dance.  And I am quoting some journalist this morning who mentioned this, and I don't remember the name.  But the fact of the matter is we are not going to repeal health care.  It is not going to happen.

And it is very interesting, their choice of words.  It is 'repeal.'  There's nothing about replacement.  What is going to replace all of those items that have been laid out that, yes, even at these early stages the public has come to appreciate:  When your child can stay until age 26, when you have a preexisting condition and you can now get insurance, when you are a small business and you can get a tax credit.

They are not going to repeal it.  It is disingenuous, it is nothing but political theater, and we need to continue to point that out to the American public.

I am going to make one comment more, which is in general.  What is sorely lacking in this about face that the Republicans have made in 24 hours, given repeal of health care, jobs and the economy, and what they have talked about will be ruinous to the economy and to the middle class, cutting education, cutting transportation.  There will be more unemployment as a result of where they want to go.

Deficit reduction.  If it weren't so sad, it would be laughable, given the rules that they have come up with in their package and what they will do to mask the growth in the deficit.  It is just more fakery.

And, finally, what this nation needs at this moment and what our leadership has talked about is a national growth strategy.  How do we turn that economy back?  How do we create those jobs?  How do we build the manufacturing in that base?  What do we do about research, and innovation, and education and infrastructure?  All of those pieces which they want to drastically cut will create jobs, will help lower the deficit.  That's the direction.  That's the forward direction that the Speaker spoke about and where we are going.

Thank you.

Speaker Pelosi.  I just may say on the health reform bill, if everyone in America was very, very pleased with his or her health insurance, and had no complaints, and had access to quality affordable health care in our country, it still would have been necessary for us to pass the health care reform bill because we could not sustain the system.

Now, you know that it is not true that people are satisfied with their health insurance, and that tens of millions of people are excluded from it, and people are thrown off their policy if they become sick or their policy is rescinded.  If they need surgery, you know that pre-existing conditions exclude.  You know that list that is covered by the Patients' Bill of Rights, and that would be reason alone to do it.

But the sustainability of the cost of health care to individual families, to small businesses, to corporate America, to our economy in terms of our competitiveness internationally, and also to our Federal budget was unsustainable, and that is why this comprehensive health care reform, one of the main reasons why, it was necessary.  As Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz says, over $100 billion in the first 10 years, over $1 trillion in the next 10 years following that.  That is from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

So to say we are going to repeal it is, just as has been said by my colleagues, is to do very serious violence to the national debt and deficit.  So what it means for personal security, what it means for fiscal security to our country, you can't just say, I like the palatable parts of this, but I don't want the structural change that is required.

Q: Madam Speaker, the rules that the Republicans presumably will adopt tomorrow would allow for the extension of tax cuts or tax breaks without regard to the effect on the deficit or any requirements of spending cuts.  Will Democrats oppose that on the basis that it fails your checklist of contributing to the deficit?

House Majority Leader Hoyer.  Absolutely we will oppose it, and it is a continuation, not a change, not an about face; a continuation of the policies that, frankly, have been in place under a Republican President since I have been in Congress.  Ronald Reagan came in and adopted an economic program that created $1.4 trillion of deficits over the next 8 years.  George Bush continued those policies and added another trillion dollars, that was $2.4 trillion, to the deficit.

Bill Clinton came in in 1993, and we adopted a PAYGO process, which we had pursued in 1990 as well in a bipartisan way and renewed in 1997 in a bipartisan way.  That statutory PAYGO process led us to a surplus for the first time in over a century for 8 years of the President's term under Bill Clinton, $62.9 billion surplus.

We then jumped, in effect we went back to the rules that they now want to adopt tomorrow.  We went back to those rules, and we incurred an additional $2.6 trillion in deficits, which means that under Republican Presidents, since I have been in Congress, some 30 years, we have had some $5.5 trillion of operating deficits and a surplus under Bill Clinton.  Those rules that they are providing now say, in effect, if you cut revenues, or if you eliminate health care, or you do about 10 other things, you don't have to pay for it.  Somebody will pay for it.  It will be our children and our grandchildren who will pay for it.  There is no free lunch.

Supply side economics that is argued so fervently for by so many simply means if you do less, you get more.  Nothing that I have done in my lifetime showed me that if I did less, I got more.  Nothing.  And as a result, we will oppose these rules that unfortunately would return turn us to the fiscal irresponsibility that was practiced under President Reagan, President Bush, and the second President Bush, which put us deeply, deeply into deficit, and, contrary to the research, it not only did not grow the economy, but gave us the worst economy we have seen since Herbert Hoover.

Speaker Pelosi.  Thank you all very much.

Congressman Van Hollen.  I just wanted to add one thing about the Rules package and the budget.  In addition to that provision, they, as you probably saw, said that when you go through the budget reconciliation process, which was designed to help reduce the deficits    if you go through the budget reconciliation process, no longer do you have to have a deficit reduction, but you can blow a hole in the deficit through the budget reconciliation process.  So their rules package is chock full of stuff that leads to fiscal irresponsibility, and that's just one more example.

Speaker Pelosi.  I just want to say this.  As a mother and a grandmother, and as parents and grandparents here, we don't have any intention of leaving any bills for our children, personal or otherwise, certainly not fiscally in terms of our country.  The issues that you have been asking about that relate to the deficit are of the utmost seriousness because they address the strength of America.

When we talk about what savings there may be and people want to cut education, we know that that's a bad choice.  Nothing you can name brings more money to the Treasury than investing in the education of our children of the American people.  Nothing.  So to cut there is a false economy.

But this deficit reduction and pay as you go is an initiative that has been with us for 30 years.  It passed a Democratic Party convention, midterm convention, in 1982, and then became law later, as Mr. Hoyer mentioned, during the Clinton administration, where it produced budgets in balance or in surplus, rejected under President Bush.

Now we have to fight this fight again.  But it is very important.  Since the beginning of our Republic, the debate about revenue and investment has been a simple one.  It will continue to be.  But, again, we want to see initiatives to solve problems for the American people, creating jobs, strengthening the middle class, and reducing the deficit without putting the burden of debt on our children and our grandchildren.

Thank you all very much.  See you tomorrow.