Transcript of Pelosi, House Democratic Leadership Press Conference After House Republicans Vote to Sue the President

July 31, 2014

Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Members of the House Democratic Leadership held a press conference tonight after House Republicans voted to authorize Speaker Boehner's politically-motivated and meritless lawsuit against the President. Below is a transcript of the Leader's opening remarks, as well as a question and answer session:Leader Pelosi's Opening Remarks "Good evening. It is a good evening, except for what's happening on the floor of the House. As always, it is my privilege to be here with the House Democratic Leadership, and we will be shortly joined by Chairwoman Louise Slaughter, our Ranking Member on the Rules Committee. I salute her for the excellent work she has done in the committee and on the floor to fight this motion to sue the President of the United States. "I will only make two points. First: the question comes up that the Republicans are using the taxpayers' time and money to sue the President. We don't have money to have early childhood education for our children – they have rejected the President's universal pre-k – but we do have money to sue the President. We don't have money to lower the cost of student loans, but we do have money to sue the President. "How much money is that? Nobody knows, not even the Chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, when she was asked today in the debate. She doesn't know. This is endless. We don't know how much it will cost. As they say – we don't have money for our priorities, and this should not be a priority. "The other question and other point that I will make is about standing. This House of Representative does not have standing to sue the President. And because of the actions that they are taking – misusing the public's time and resources – because of budgets that they have presented to the Congress of the United States, the Republicans in Congress do not have standing to talk to the American people about solving their problems. They do not have standing to say: ‘We want to create jobs here at home,' when in their decision they are giving tax breaks to companies to send jobs overseas. They do not have standing to say: ‘Let's build the infrastructure of America. Let's have Build America Bonds,' because they prefer to use those resources to give tax breaks to special interests – tax loopholes for special interests. "So when we don't have the money to have this suit – they don't have the money to do better things for the American people. We shouldn't be spending money on this. They don't have the standing to do what's right for the American people, and they certainly don't have standing to sue the President of the United States. As I said on the floor today: This isn't about this lawsuit. You don't sue somebody unless you want to prove that they are wrong. This is about the road to impeachment. And if it is not, the Speaker can say one simple sentence: Impeachment is off the table. That's what I had to say in 2007. That's what Speaker Boehner should be saying now. "With that, I'm pleased to yield to our distinguished Whip, Mr. Hoyer. I'm submitting my glowing introduction of him to the record."

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Leader Pelosi. Do we have any questions? No? Q: I have a question for Ms. Slaughter on what you just said about the Rules Committee, if you don't mind. Congresswoman Slaughter. Oh yes. Q: I wanted to see if anyone else had a question…Leader Pelosi. Well, do you have a question about the lawsuit? Because he's going to other issues. Yes, sir? Q: I was just going to ask – there was some thought that there might be a Democrat who would vote for the resolution. If you can comment on how the vote played out, and also the five Republicans who joined you in voting against it – the more conservative wing of the Caucus.Leader Pelosi. Steny, do you want to speak on this? Whip Hoyer. Well, hey, we got some Republicans voting [no] on this. Leader Pelosi. For one reason or another. Whip Hoyer. I think the Democrats had a consistent view that, as [Justice] Scalia said – you know, Justice Scalia doesn't always agree with us, or we with him – but he said: This suing of one branch of another and asking the Judiciary to arbitrate is not good policy or good law. And I think that's why you saw the vote you saw. Leader Pelosi. Any other questions on the lawsuit? Q: For Chairman Israel: You've had great success fundraising on this impeachment threat. How far do you plan to take it into August? Is this something we're going to see over and over again?Congressman Israel. Look, any time a Republican majority in the House of Representatives makes the determination that they should focus all of their energy on discussing impeachment of the President and suing the President, you bet you can expect that our supporters are going to be energized – and not just our supporters, but moderate voters, persuadable voters, swing voters. They have had it with the excessive partisanship. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that when you have Republicans actively talking about impeachment, and then spending an entire day today and this entire week focusing on how to sue the President, that many Americans are going to be disgusted and are going to act on that disgust by seeking an alternative that's going to be focused on solutions for them – solutions that matter to their pocketbook. Leader Pelosi. It might be interesting to note that much of the support sprung from all of this discussion has been spontaneous. People are just angry. I believe the Republican – part of their agenda was to motivate their base, to energize their base; but they energized ours and they turned off the middle. So we have a situation where – even the Chairman of the [Rules] Committee said that it was right to impeach Clinton. So they're talking about impeachment on the floor: "It was right to impeach Clinton" – President Clinton. Any other questions on the lawsuit? Yes, sir. Q: Thank you I'm sorry this is for…Leader Pelosi. Louise. Q: So you say that they've put the Rules Committee on…Congresswoman Slaughter. On standby… Q: Do you have any agreements…Congresswoman Slaughter. We're on standby, which means that we broke to go do the votes and the hearing – most of that. And then we were told that we would come back and vote out the bill – the supplemental bill, that is – so that it would be on the floor tomorrow. Because we would do martial law and suspension authority as part of the rule. The last thing I heard as I left the floor is that they have no agreement whatsoever. As a matter of fact, it's a very troubled piece of legislation. And we may be here most of the night trying to come to some conclusion thereon. Q: When you hear that – I realize you're not privy to all their meetings here. That sounds like…Congresswoman Slaughter. I've had experience, Chad. [Laughter] When they tell us we'll be getting together in an hour, we know that's at least four or five. [Laughter] Q: And what does that tell you about the state of this legislation? I know Ted Cruz is across the…Congresswoman Slaughter. That we may be stuck tomorrow just voting for that deregulation of pesticides that they put on the same rule that they had to sue the President of the United States, which I though was maybe not a bad juxtaposition. But that was rather odd. Pick the poison. Vice Chair Crowley. Yeah, pick your poison. [Laughter] Leader Pelosi. In any event, what they're asking us is to give a blank check to them to sue the President, to waste the taxpayers' time instead of helping the middle class; to waste time on this – on a subject on which they have no standing. Blank check, waste time, no standing – that's the product of their work for today, instead of helping us make progress to create jobs for the American people. Thank you all very much for coming.