Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference Today
Washington D.C. - Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was joined by Congressman Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, at her weekly press conference today in the Capitol Visitor Center. Below is a transcript of the press conference.
Leader Pelosi. Good morning. I'm very pleased to be here with my colleague from Maryland, the Ranking Member on the Government Reform and Oversight Committee of the Congress of the United States. He's going to speak to an issue that he has taken the lead on and for which we are very proud of him that relates to price at the pump and the role of speculation in it.
But before we hear from him, I wanted to say that since last we met we had a spectacular election in New York 26. I want to congratulate Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul for her wonderful campaign. Medicare was the issue, as you know. It opened the door for her and she walked through--guaranteeing Medicare for America's seniors, calling into question the priorities of making seniors pay more while giving tax breaks to Big Oil, and again their focus on job creation.
As you may know, she is a respected County Clerk of Erie County. She is not unfamiliar with Washington, having worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and our former colleague in the House John LaFalce. But she brings a great knowledge of her district, which is more important than any familiarity with Washington. She is a mom, two kids, two young children--not young child, college age. To all those out there who wonder who's going to take care of her children, they are college age. And we feel very--I know that she will be a great addition to the Congress.
I spoke to her again this morning and said, you really did a great, great service to the American people by making the fight for Medicare and we thank you for that, especially in calling to the public's attention the wrong priorities of making seniors pay more as we give tax breaks to the wealthy and to Big Oil.
I wanted to move on to the issue of Medicare. We always say Medicare, Medicare, Medicare. Medicare in the 26th of New York, Medicare in terms of strengthening it.
Some of you may recall in our 6 for '06 when we took over the House in '07, it was 6 [in the] '06 election, we had two provisions in there that are relevant to the discussion we're having now. One of them relates to how we strengthen Medicare and actually lower costs, all health care costs in our country. If you can read it, I will read from the actual card which you may recognize: Fix the prescription drug program by putting people ahead of drug companies and HMOs. Eliminating wasteful subsidies, negotiating lower prices, and ensuring the program works for all seniors.
This negotiating for lower prices is something that we didn't succeed with when President Bush was President. We did have it in the House version of the health care bill, but it did not we couldn't hold it in the Senate, but we do believe that it is a way to strengthen Medicare by reducing cost. I could answer some questions about dual eligibles, et cetera, but the point is there are savings to be had by negotiating the drug prices and addressing how Medicare reimbursement takes place, the drug benefits.
Also, as part of our 6 for '06 was lower gas prices and achieve energy independence and, specific to that, crack down on price gouging, eliminate billions in subsidies for Big Oil and gas companies and use the savings to provide consumer relief.
That's the subject that our distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Cummings, will address more specifically, but how it relates to Medicare is in our old friend Mr. Markey's chart; that is to say, the chart is our old friend. The oil rig on top of a Medicare card. How can you face the public when you vote for a bill, the Republican budget that gives tax breaks to Big Oil while requiring seniors to pay more for less and empowering the health insurance companies? It's simply the wrong priority. Democrats will not let this happen.
Medicare is a pillar of economic and health security for America's seniors. We will fight to defend it, we will guarantee that that we will prevail, because as President Lincoln had said, public sentiment is everything, and the public sentiment is to preserve Medicare. Again we intend to strengthen it while reducing cost of drugs, et cetera by eliminating fraud, which is a part of our health care bill as well, but the fight that we will be having is with those who want to end Medicare. That simply will not happen.
Now as we talk about the misplaced priorities of the Republicans and we talk about the fact that they are giving tax breaks to big oil while they're raising costs for America's seniors, it's very important to note what other things are being done about it.
Our distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Cummings, has issued a report, you may be familiar with it, but you're going to be more familiar with it now. I thank him for his leadership and yield the podium to him.
Congressman Cummings. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.
We in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee are extremely concerned, that is the Democratic side and all of our folks on our side, we were concerned about the fact that we see our constituents every day or every weekend and they are complaining about gas prices, $4 and above. And so we decided to look into this because we had heard all kinds of reasons for it, for these gas prices, and we issued this report called "Real Help for American Consumers: Who's Profiting At the Pump?" And what we found was that--and our research is quite extensive--is that industry, government and other experts agree that excessive speculation is driving the cost of oil, potentially by as much as 30 percent. That's very, very significant.
We also found that this whole idea of focusing in on the industry's priorities of increasing drilling will have almost no impact, which is interesting. The EIA, the United States Energy Information Administration, by the way, as you well know, is our foremost source of energy information analysis, has said that there would be no change by 2020 and that gas prices would decrease by only $0.03 per gallon by 2030 by going this drill, baby, drill route.
Third, what we found in our research was that the influence of speculators have increased tremendously. In March, the CFTC warned that from 2008 to 2010 futures contracts held by speculators increased 64 percent in energy contracts. That's very, very significant. So we're not trying to--what we discovered is that there's something called excessive speculation. And then of course the case that just was filed by the CFTC deals more with illegal activities and so--but there is a relationship. So again we have got to concentrate now on this excessive speculation, gas prices higher 30 percent because of that, we have to address that. And hopefully I'm calling on Chairman Issa to use the resources of our committee effectively and efficiently to look into this speculation and, too, we're going to have to protect the provisions of Dodd-Frank, which has provisions that will allow us to put certain limits with regard to this excessive speculation.
And I'm open to questions, Madam Chairman.
Leader Pelosi. Thank you very much for your report, for your leadership on this issue, which has a direct impact on the pocketbooks of America's consumers. It hits home, very close to home for them, and it is almost unaffordable for them to go to work if they work a long distance from home for the prices they have to pay at the pump. And so the role of speculation is an important one in terms of what you said, 30 percent.
But at the same time as that is happening, this is what the Republicans in Congress are doing. This week the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, heretofore will be known as the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, filed a lawsuit against two traders and three firms for allegedly trying to horde crude oil in 2008 and dumping it for a $50 million gain, strong evidence that speculators play a role in driving up the price at the pump.
As families and small businesses face these high prices, the House Republicans have done the following: The House Republicans voted in committee to delay until September 2012 implementation of stronger Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules to prevent speculation in commodities, including crude oil, gasoline and heating oil. So they are pushing down the road the regulations to protect consumers from this speculation.
They are also in the Appropriations Committee slashing funding for the--I'm going to say it every time so you know what it is--the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency tasked with policing manipulation in the oil markets. Just think of it, this is the commission that is policing speculation and other abuses in the oil markets and they are slashing the funding, impeding their success at that, and they are kicking the can down the road in terms of the implementation of the stronger rules.
By their actions Republicans--simply put, by their actions Republicans are defending this speculation, the speculation that hurts the consumer. Democrats are standing for the middle class families who continue to bear the brunt of high gas prices. It is a very serious matter. And it all comes back to our chart.
How can we say--and we all agree we must reduce the deficit. We must invest in growth, we must cut, and we must look at revenue. So how can we possibly say that it is a good economy and not a false economy to say to seniors, we're starting with you, you're going to ante up $6,000 more so we can give tax cuts to Big Oil.
If we were to remove these subsidies, I remind you, we would save about just a little over $30 billion over 10 years, which can be used to reduce the deficit and invest in renewable other alternatives to fossil fuels. That's exactly what the Big Five, the Big Five companies made in the first three months of this year. Their profits, not made, their profits were over $30 billion and they have written among them, some of them have written a letter to say that to remove their subsidies would be un American. We totally disagree. Any questions?
Q: Madam Leader, some of the Republicans will be coming in here in a few minutes to unveil what they describe it as their plan to help job creators. With unemployment still at around 9 percent, do Democrats have any additional plans to promote jobs beyond the status quo?
Leader Pelosi. Well, we have had job initiatives all along that the Republicans have stood in the way of. President Obama was a job creator from day one. The Recovery Act created or saved over three and a half million jobs. The Republicans in the Senate held up all of the other job initiatives we sent there. But we are very proud, and I should announce but you all know, that the investments we made in helping the auto industry are paying off for us. The payback is six years ahead of time, the industry appears to be thriving and what we said was a lifeline, not life support, turns out to be just that, and that is a job creator.
I think what you will see from our Republican friends, if the Wall Street Journal is a reliable source, is that it is warmed over stew. These are the same policies in the Bush administration that did not create jobs, that increased the deficit, did not strengthen the middle class, and they will come back with this same thing.
The fact is job creation, you have to invest in growth and job creation. They have resisted what we wanted to do in investing in energy resources, science, research and development, all of that. They have voted to abolish the health care bill, which creates 4 million jobs. So they are trying to undo what we have put into law for job creation and to come back with the same old, same old, which were the policies of the Bush administration which got us in the fix we are in now with high unemployment, deep deficits, and an economy that has long way to come back from the Bush recession that these the policies got us into in the first place.
Q: Madam Leader, congratulations on New York, upstate New York race, but you're definitely as much as a realist as I've ever met. So you're still a significant minority in the House. How do you proceed to do things like get negotiation on prescription drug prices? I mean you couldn't do it last time; now you are in kind of a weaker position. You talk about job creation and the things that you've said the Republicans have stomped on. Does it get frustrating and how do you proceed to try to make those issues important?
Leader Pelosi. Well, the issue of deficit reduction is center stage, as you know. We know how to reduce the deficit. We had to sweep up after President Bush 41, the deep deficits that he left, that President Clinton inherited. With the bill that we passed with no Republican votes in the Congress, we took our country away from those deficits and by the time President Clinton left we were in a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. The last four of his budgets were either in surplus or they were in balance. So we know how to do this. We had "pay-as-you-go" as an important part of that. And so we have to--as the focus is now again on the urgency to reduce the deficit, some Republicans are calling it immoral, I agree, and it was very immoral during Bush 43, President Bush 43, when they just--two unpaid for wars, tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country, a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that we are trying to correct here caused a tremendous deficit in addition to an economic policy that did not create jobs and took us into a deep recession, therefore reducing revenues into the Treasury.
So as the attention and focus is on deficit reduction, as I said earlier, public sentiment is everything. We have to take this to the American people. When they see the Republicans saying big tax subsidies for big oil, seniors pay more, well, there are lots of other places we can go to save money and one of them is there. And so we have to make this debate as public a debate as possible because this is a ripoff of the taxpayer, to have the pharmaceutical companies make as much money as they do. There is nothing that increases the cost of health care either across the board or specifically to Medicare than the increasing cost of pharmaceuticals. We must address that issue.
So when people say are you going to do any in Medicare? That's one thing that we're going to do?
Q: You said that you'd take it to the American people. Does that mean that you're going to wait until the next election
Leader Pelosi. No, no, I think you saw in New York 26 the public out on it. And what's interesting to me is the 10 years the Republicans have. Forty Republicans yesterday voted for the Republican plan that ends Medicare and gives tax breaks to big oil. This is what they believe, this is what they believe, and we have to have that public debate. And frankly my preference would be that they would change their mind and help seniors and to have a fair policy in terms of the balance in our budget. But if they don't, then it becomes a political issue. I'd rather have the problem solved than have a political issue.
Q: Madam Leader, you talked about the election of Kathy Hochul here and immediately invoked Medicare here. Do you think that your party runs the risk of overplaying the hand on Medicare because it seems there were Medicare factors in that race there, but using that in other elections and using that as sort of this totem as we get toward the 2012 election?
Leader Pelosi. Let me say this, this was not a race at the top of our list to go into. This is an issue that emerged in this district. Public sentiment is everything and the public sentiment in this district was very negative toward the Republican plan to end Medicare and continue tax cuts at the high end, especially to Big Oil.
The candidate, Kathy Hochul, is extremely talented. She's just an absolutely great person, candidate, and will be a great Member of Congress. When that door opened on Medicare, she walked right through it and saw the connection between increasing cost for seniors while giving tax breaks to Big Oil. And that combination I think was what was helpful to her, because these tax breaks are not creating jobs. And so every race is a different one. And again this was not one that was, shall we say, a priority early on this year that we would go into, but it drew us in.
Q: Madam Leader, are there any aspects of the GOP plan for the H 1B visa process or patent reform that you do agree with?
Leader Pelosi. Well, I don't know exactly what patent reform bill, but if it is the patent bill going through the House, I think it has serious, serious problems. So again we're always waiting to see what changes would be made there, but you have a different view if you're small and if you're large, and you know that. On the patent it is a very complicated issue.
As far as H1B visas are concerned, we have always said we want comprehensive immigration reform, that we need to control our borders and enforce our laws, and have a path to legalization for people who are here and to protect our workers. H1B is something I've always been for and it's part of our Innovation Agenda. We would hope those who care about H1B visas will care about other aspects for a need for immigration reform; for example, the DREAM Act.
Q: Madam Leader, do you have any expectations that immigration reform has any chance in this Congress? There has been no progress.
Leader Pelosi. What do you think, Mr. Cummings?
Congressman Cummings. I think it's going to be very difficult, as the Speaker said, we've been very disappointed with the DREAM Act?
Leader Pelosi. We passed it in the House.
Congressman Cummings. Yes, that is right, but I think it is going to be very difficult.
Leader Pelosi. Do you want to say anything about any of the other questions that were asked?
Congressman Cummings. Madam Speaker, I just want--finally, when we look at this whole issue of gas, we want the American people to know that we feel their pain and that we and I've said to Mr. Issa, our Chairman, that we need to use or committee to be effective and efficient in what we do, and by cutting down the protections that are there in Dodd Frank and trying to cut the budget of the Trade Commission is crazy. And we can do better, we're better than that. And Madam Speaker, I thank you again for your leadership.
Leader Pelosi. Thank you. I just want to once again congratulate Congresswoman-Elect Kathy Hochul, look forward to welcoming her here next week. I also want to congratulate the Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Steve Israel, who did a remarkable job on short notice to make sure that the message was out there and whatever support we can give. But you've heard me say before, you have to have your three Ms, you have to have your mobilization at the grassroots level, and this issue, the Medicare issue, really galvanized the Democratic Party. You have to have money to deliver the message. The mobilization, the money, the message. From the standpoint of our committee, the roles that we have played, Steve Israel played masterfully, and he is a great field marshal for efforts to win back the House, and I would also add my congratulations to him on for his wonderful success.
Thank you all very much. We are having the debate on Afghanistan on the floor, so I have to excuse myself.
Q: Can we get your thoughts on that before you leave, or is now the time to finally pass this?
Leader Pelosi. Well, if time allows, or I will try to get time to speak for the McGovern amendment, which asks the President for a timetable. I believe, as I've said to the President of Afghanistan, the American people are weary of war, this is too expensive. We'll do whatever it takes to protect the American people and ensure our national security. We want to know that what we're doing there does that. We want a timetable to bring the troops home. I also told him that we didn't go there for--recognizing that we had no plan for the first 7 years we were there, but we didn't go there so that when we left that women would be returning to the position they were in before we came in and that in any decisions he makes about reconciliation; that is, with the Taliban or reintegration with the Taliban, there should be women at the table who can ensure that that reconciliation takes place in a way that does not set women back in Afghanistan.
Thank you all.