Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference Today
Leader Pelosi. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning it is.
As you know, yesterday the 2015 Census Bureau report found that, last year, families saw the largest percentage increase in household income in almost 50 years; 3.5 million Americans climbed out of poverty and the uninsured rate, health insurance rate, continued to reach historic lows.
The Census Bureau report is, like, the mother of all indicators. This is a very big deal and it is very good news. We must build on that progress to build an economy that works for everyone, not just the privileged few.
And in keeping with that, Democrats pledged to secure our future as part of the Stronger America Agenda, which I am sure you are familiar with, and a New American Security Agenda that includes securing our future. We need a budget that will move the economy forward by creating a secure financial future for all Americans so they can educate their children, own a home, and retire with dignity.
Related to that is to secure our democracy by removing barriers to voting and overturning Citizens United, getting rid of the poisonous swamp of secret money in our politics – it is directly related to our policy – and to secure our nation, including, of course, keeping the American people safe in every way, globally, domestically, at home, in their neighborhoods, and personally.
And so personally we can act to address the public health emergency of Zika, of opioids, what is happening in Flint. And of course part of the public health crisis in our country is gun violence.
Zika, almost 19,000 Americans, including 1,800 now pregnant women, have been infected with Zika. The number has grown since last we spoke. As you know, the President submitted an urgent request for emergency resources in February – February – and now we are into the middle of September.
Flint. Thousands of lead?poisoned children in Flint are still waiting for help one year later.
Opioids, dozens of Americans are dying of opioid overdoses every day, and we pass bills, but we refuse to provide the funding.
Gun violence, again a serious part of the public health crisis in our country. Ninety?one Americans lose their lives to gun violence every day, a serious public health emergency. Yesterday, once more, Democrats brought photos of gun violence victims to the floor, highlighting the cost of Congress' indefensible refusal to act.
How could it be that we have adjourned at 10:30 on Thursday? We have plenty of time to bring a gun violence prevention bill to the floor. No Fly, No Buy. Just expanding background checks to include Internet sales and gun shows. And yet we are going home at 10:30 on Thursday.
We can't afford the squandering of the legislative calendar. We have done nothing this week. We were going to impeach the director of the IRS, and now that is put off until next week, and instead we are talking about Guantanamo and some bills this week that were harmful to the financial security of the American people.
So as we go into this discussion on the continuing resolution, the CR to keep government open, we have to insist there be no poison pills. I also think that we should be addressing some of these emergencies under an emergency title, which means they would have no offsets, but we are still in those conversations.
That is where we are. Any questions?
Oh, I may just say, right now on the floor of the House we are having a special order for our colleague Mark Takai, who passed away in July, 49 years old, 18 months into his term in Congress. You probably saw yesterday the beautiful ceremony the Speaker presided over in Statuary Hall. The Vice President of the United States was there. His family spoke so eloquently, as did our colleagues, about him.
He was a great Member. His passing is a tragedy personally for his family, first and foremost, but a great loss to the Congress and to the country. And he lived his dream, served our country in the military and as a State legislator, a Member of Congress. And just pointing out the need for us to have more biomedical research, he got a diagnosis of cancer in October, gone in July.
It was wonderful that the Vice President was there. He didn't talk about the moonshot as he mourned Mark, but very much a part of what we need to do for the American people. And, again, that is a budget issue.
So I am going to be leaving you shortly to join my colleagues on the floor to honor Mark Takai.
Yes, sir.
Q: Just to go back to what you said a second ago about emergency designation, is it your position that neither Zika funding nor, say, Louisiana flood funding should be offset and should be treated as emergency spending?
Leader Pelosi. I am certain that the Louisiana money will be not offset. That is considered a natural disaster. And it shouldn't. This is a disaster.
Let's go back a year. We had a budget agreement last year with caps as to what the investments would be. It did not take into consideration Zika, $1.9 billion, opioids, $1.1 billion. It did not allow for any funding for Flint. And we certainly did not know about Louisiana. So there is no way that that money can come out of the existing budget.
I don't think there will be any doubt that we would say that in terms of Louisiana, that is an emergency and it should not be offset, even though some of the Louisiana Members were not on board to support Sandy funding when that emergency occurred. But that was then, this is now, we go forward. We wouldn't think of denying them the help that they need, and I do not think it should be offset.
Zika is a national emergency as well. Where in our budget of last year would that money come from except to cannibalize the rest of the budget. But we will see. In other words, I don't think Louisiana – hopefully it will be in a CR. I am not even sure it is going to be in the CR. But it will happen, it will be the CR or the omnibus or some kind of a supplemental that might happen in between.
Any other questions? Yes, sir.
Q: Madam Leader, so you mentioned the impeachment effort of the IRS Commissioner.
Leader Pelosi. Yeah.
Q: That said, when you get down to the numbers of this, whether they try to do this in committee or if they do report out a resolution and put it to the floor, your Members would pretty much vote unanimously no.
Leader Pelosi. Right.
Q: There is certainly consternation on their side of the aisle in that there would be a block. It seems like even though in one respect this is going forward, short?circuited on the floor today, that it would be very hard when it gets to the math to impeach the IRS Commissioner, and therefore your position and the Democrats' position would have prevailed.
Leader Pelosi. Well, we'll see. I have no idea what the Republicans would do. It's so totally irresponsible that even some of them know that they should not be impeaching the IRS Commissioner, and that is probably why they kicked the can down the road this week. But to even continue the conversation in committee is something that, if we were going to do it, we should have voted to do it.
You see, the three options on the floor would have been to table, to send it back to committee, or to just cast it into the future for another day. And so they sent it to committee without a vote. I don't know if they would have passed a vote to send it to committee, apropos of your comments.
Q: But I mean based on now, it seems like the math would be harder, because there are Members of that committee…
Leader Pelosi. So let's hope that that is the case. But I can't speak to you about the numbers on the Republican side, as you can probably well imagine.
Yes, ma'am.
Q: I am curious your thoughts on Donald Trump's proposal this week for 6 weeks of mandatory paid family leave. Do you welcome such a proposal, which is along the lines of ideas that Democrats, including yourself, have advocated?
Leader Pelosi. No, it isn't along those lines. Let me correct the record. As you know, the When Women Succeed, America Succeeds agenda includes the issue that relates to child care, affordable child care with paying workers to help take care of our children.
What Hillary Clinton put forward was 12 weeks of paid parental leave, men and women, twice the time, men and women, and something that has support among the Democrats in the Congress, something we have been advocating for a long time but was resisted by the Republicans. And even the Republicans have said they are not supporting Donald Trump's proposal, which I don't know why, it is a cultural thing, maybe, but they just are not.
Now, to get to his point, what he is proposing benefits higher?end people, and so I think that maybe he just doesn't know the issue that well as to what really makes a difference, or the history as to how long this debate has been going on and the resistance of his own party to it, going back as far as Richard Nixon when it was on his desk and people thought he was going to sign it. That is what I thought at the time. But then he vetoed it.
So, again, this isn't just about something you put down on a piece of paper, it is about ‘what is sustainable about it?' Can he get the votes? People in his own party who were at the announcement said they weren't for it. So it isn't real, and Hillary Clinton's is, and she has the full support of the Democrats.
Yes, ma'am.
Q: I am wondering if you could go back to the CR.
Leader Pelosi. Yes.
Q: Do you think that at this point in the negotiations it makes sense for the Senate to go first? And if they do go first and pass the CR, does it make it easier, in your assessment, for it to pass here in the House?
Leader Pelosi. Well, I don't ever like to give up the prerogative of the first, of the House, which the Constitution gives us, to say that an appropriation bill must begin in the House. If it is beginning in the Senate it is because the Speaker can't pass a bill, originate a bill in the House, and that is unfortunate because we'd all like to be able to weigh in more fulsome, fully on our side rather than receiving what the Senate will pass.
Having said that, the bill that they are writing is a House?passed shell, a shell that came from the House, so that legitimizes or validates its constitutionality.
I would rather it start over here, but I think that the Speaker had enough of a challenge to go from 6 months to 3 months and that he considers that, I think, his contribution to the cause. And Senator McConnell will bring something forward, but it looks like it is going to be next week rather than this week, because we just haven't reached agreement. Because unless the Speaker can produce votes on his side for a bill that the President will sign, we have to have some input into what the makeup of that legislation is if they expect Democratic votes.
Yes, ma'am.
Q: Madam Leader, more on the CR. How involved are House Democrats in negotiations compared to your Senate counterparts, and are Democrats on this side willing to lend votes to support a Senate?passed CR if House Republicans can't support it?
Leader Pelosi. Well, it depends on what it is.
Q: Okay.
Leader Pelosi. But we are very excellently served by [Congresswoman] Nita Lowey, our ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, and she is in close communication with Senator Mikulski, the ranking Democrat on the Senate side, I with Senator Reid.
But when you are writing a bill in one house, then that house dominates the framework. But we feel very much that the message is clear. I do not believe that there should be offsets. There probably will be. What are they, and how much?
I do believe that Flint should be included in it and that we have no poison pills, no poison pills in the bill, and that we should act quickly to remove all doubt that we will meet our deadline of September 30.
Yes, sir.
Q: Looking to the lame duck, assuming you do push spending to December 9, Speaker Ryan left the White House meeting on Monday and immediately put out a statement saying that he opposes an omnibus and he made that clear during the meeting. He is going to push the minibus idea. I am wondering what you think of that, if you care what the bills look like, or do you just want to get the thing over the finish line? What's your preference?
Leader Pelosi. Well, first of all, any minibuses, I mean, I don't know what the point is of doing minibuses unless they add up to an omnibus. In other words, you can't say, well, we are doing minibuses, which means we are only doing certain bills, we are not doing the whole package.
So what I will say to you is if the minibuses add up to an omnibus, if everything is included, that we can vote on something like that when we see the whole package. But you can't say go with one bill, use up all the money, and say there is nothing left for the others. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?
Q: I do know what you mean.
Leader Pelosi. Yes, ma'am.
Q: Leader Pelosi, in the last week or so there have been real questions raised about Hillary Clinton's transparency, her campaign's handling of information, and about her health, and polls in battleground States and nationally are tightening and Trump is pulling ahead in some key states. Are you concerned about issues surrounding her transparency? And how worried are you that those are going to translate into the contests for the House? Because you have recently been saying you think there is a real shot that you could take over.
Leader Pelosi. Yes, I do. Let me just say that – you said, I think your question was, how concerned are you? I'm not concerned. I think Hillary Clinton, when she comes out, goes out today with her usual exuberance and her values, will campaign in a very important way. Hillary Clinton will show her vision for America and how she intends to address the future, show her knowledge and judgment on issues facing our country, show her strategic thinking on how to get something done, and to do so in a way that identifies with the concerns of America's working families.
But the big difference between our two parties, one is trickle?down economics, the other is middle?class economics, an economy that works for everyone, and I think we couldn't have a more articulate spokesperson to make that distinction. She has devoted her life to America's children and families. I think she'll be emphasizing that today, at least that is what I heard in the news. It has been her lifetime commitment, a lifetime of public service for America's families. So I'm not concerned.
If you want to talk politics, I want Hillary Clinton to have the biggest possible mandate. But if the Republicans want to believe that this race is tightening, let them believe that, because the more our own people see that it is important to vote, and a tight race sort of speaks to that urgency, the more of them will turn out. So it works to our advantage.
Q: Do you stand by your prediction that the House is in play?
Leader Pelosi. Oh, definitely, yes. Definitely.
Q: How many seats are you going to net?
Leader Pelosi. Well, as I said yesterday on one of your competitor's – I mean, maybe you don't compete, I don't know.
Q: Friendly competition.
Leader Pelosi. I think that the gift that keeps on giving, that would be the Republican nominee, has helped us mobilize voters at the grassroots level, increasing our registration. And urgency for turnout helps us raise money. So we have two wins, mobilization and money, and the third being message. He makes a clear distinction between us and him. I wish it wouldn't have to be that way, I wish it would be just about all of us. But he is a gift that keeps on giving, as I say. So as I said on that station, I think it comes down to, like, a single digit, they will be ahead by a single digit or we will be ahead by a single digit.
Q: You mean in the House races?
Leader Pelosi. Yeah.
Q: You mean in the House races?
Leader Pelosi. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. I was getting back to here, House races. I think Hillary will win.
It is going to be very exciting, because she is so talented, she is so accomplished. When she goes into that Oval Office, she will do so with more experience than the rest and most of our recent Presidents, with all due respect to all of them, including her husband, for her life of public service. And she happens to be a woman, and that's wonderful, but that's not why people should vote for her. They should vote for her because she's the best. Thank you all very much.
Q: The Giants are faltering.
Leader Pelosi. The Giants? Well, it is not over yet. We are going to get the wildcard.
Q: Single digits on that too?
Leader Pelosi. The wildcard. The wildcard. That is how we won in '14, was as a wildcard team.
Q: And '12. It is an even?numbered year.
Leader Pelosi. There you go. Catch that? Catch that? It's the Giants, but when I'm in Baltimore, it's the Orioles.
Q: All politics is local.