Transcript of Pelosi Weekly Press Conference Today

Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi held her weekly press conference today in the Capitol Visitor Center.  Below is a transcript of the press conference:

Leader Pelosi.  Good morning.  All rested up after the ballgame last night?  Wasn't it fun?  Everybody played well.  It was good fun.  Lovely to work in a bipartisan, bicameral way with our friends in the press.  Congratulations to sportsmanship.

Yesterday we appointed conferees to go on the veterans bill, the various veterans bills, the Senate bill and the two House bills – Chairman Jeff Miller's bill.  As we go to conference, it would probably have been cleaner if we could have just taken up the Senate bill sent it to the President and gone down that path.  The conference does afford us the opportunity, though, to make clear – as we would on the debate in any event – that while we need some emergency assistance for health care for our veterans, access to health care, we have to be very careful when we go down this path that it is not one that leads to outsourcing in the long-term of health care for our veterans, or even more ominously, to privatization.  Those are concerns that the veterans service organizations have repeatedly, over time, expressed to us.

By and large, the complaint about the Veterans Administration is not about the health care. It is about the access to it, and the quantity of – you know, number of people who have access.  That is a very big problem.  So temporarily, we should be able to meet some of the needs, but not all, because many of the diagnoses that are battle related need to be treated where that expertise is, and that is in the Veterans Administration, the health care that they administer.

You have a cold, you have an appendectomy, perhaps a federally qualified health center can meet your needs.  But we have to be careful about some diagnoses that would – many physicians, primary care physicians would not be able to make that relate to battle-related.  We were told that, in some of our meetings with the vets – they have told us that there are some afflictions, for lack of a better word, that spring from the Vietnam War, that you really have to have a trained eye to see symptoms that occurred many years later and require periodic treatment that would only be available in that very specialized way in a veterans' facility.

Sunday marks the 70th anniversary of President Roosevelt signing the G.I. bill.  We have lots of 70th anniversaries.  As I mentioned to you last week, I had just came back from the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy.  We were at Omaha Beach.  We heard the President speak so beautifully.  It was just wonderful.  I think the President and others will agree, including President of France, who spoke on a number of occasions there, that the most thrilling part of it was to hear the voices of our veterans 70 years later, with all the spirit that they told us about of the day that – the days, because it actually took a while, but also what they are trying to help veterans to this day.

We should be very proud.  As I say, on battlefield we leave no soldier behind, and when they come home, we leave no veteran behind.  So we have to do this right and recognize what we are doing is temporary, and I am all for that.  And as I said to you before, under certain circumstances, and temporarily to transition us, federally qualified health centers may be able to meet the needs of some of our veterans for some of their maladies.  But not all.

It is important to note, as we talk about veterans and we also talk about unemployment insurance – not extending the benefits, there are over three million people who have been cut off from benefits.  This is since December 31st.  It is now three million people.  Hundreds of thousands of those people are veterans and/or their caregivers.  It has a remarkable impact on their families.  I have heard their stories personally – when I honored Secretary Dole here for her care and concern for our caregivers.  And their stories, some of the stories that they told me, were about how they were the primary caregiver to their veteran family member and how now they have lost their benefits.

It is just astounding that, in our country, we would not honor the commitment that we have – that when people lost their jobs through no fault of their own, including a downturn in the economy, that we would not be there for unemployment insurance.  And, by the way, it is a job creator.  Money is spent immediately, injects demand into the economy, and it creates jobs.  We should be extending unemployment insurance benefits; we should be raising the minimum wage; we should be building the infrastructure of America; we should be taking up a highway bill that enables us to do just that.

But instead, we are doing our usual nothing.  Some have complained that the elections are taken in the middle of the day.  Here we usually have elections in the morning.  Doesn't matter, morning or afternoon.  We are not doing that much anyway.  But others find it an opportunity cost of time, that we could be doing so many other things, including passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill.  That is, the clock is running out on that.  Next week will be the one year anniversary of the Senate passing a bipartisan bill.  I would hope that our Republican leadership will give us an opportunity to vote on some legislation that will take us forward.  But again, there isn't that much time.  I don't think we have 30 legislative days left from now until October.

This next week – I also think we should be taking up the Voting Rights Act.  It has now been months since the court made its ill-founded decision.  But, nonetheless, we have an opportunity.  We have a bipartisan bill.  Sponsorship is very balanced, Democrats and Republicans in support of it.  And we can't get a day on the floor to take up the Voting Rights Act.  Quite ironic, if that is the word, that this week, Tuesday, we will be observing in the Rotunda of the Capitol – great fanfare, the 50 year anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Bill.  Don't you think an appropriate observance of that outstanding legislation, which transformed America, appropriate observance would be to pass the Voting Rights Act.

Yesterday, as you know, we had a meeting with the President.  The House and Senate leadership, bipartisan leadership met with the President on the subject of our national security, including Iraq.  Three points that I think come out of that are that it is clear that the government of Iraq has to work for a political solution, including discussions with all – not ignoring any sectarian differences within their country.  Two:  I believe, and I said this to the President and the group, that the President does not need any additional Congressional authority to act upon measures to protect our national security.  I didn't want that to be misinterpreted as any support for boots on the ground, however.  And, third, well, on that subject: the President said his lawyers are looking at the authorities and the rest.  It was my hope that they would conclude that no congressional action was necessary.  So they need a political solution.  I don't think the President needs any further congressional authority, was the conversation we were having.  We will see what his lawyers say and what he tells us.

And then, third, no boots on the ground.

Any questions?  Yes, sir.

* * *

Q:  So on that last point on congressional authorization, last year, the President said that he would come to Congress to seek authorization for strikes in Syria.  And it became quickly evident that there wasn't the Congressional support for that.  There is a sense here in Congress among the leadership that if the President were to come to Congress to seek support for strikes in Iraq that he wouldn't get it? 

Leader Pelosi.  Well, let me just – you remind me of a point that I didn't make.  Thank you.  The President did say, while his lawyers were looking at what any need for congressional authorization, what he did was he said that he would hope that whatever actions our country took would have strong congressional support.  And that was part of the consultation that we had yesterday, and I believe will continue pretty much every step of the way.  I will be interested to see what the President has to say today after meeting with his national security team in the Situation Room this morning and then – was it 12:00?  12:30?

So I was among those who had thought that he had the authority to do more as far as Syria was concerned.  There was some disagreement there – a little bit of a different situation.  However, I still think we could have done more in Syria.  But with this, the President consulting with Congress, hoping to build support, I don't know that any of the members – leaders there – I didn't hear any of them demanding congressional action.  That was certainly not the case.

Q:  Your colleague Barbara Lee, she said that she is going to author an amendment to try to block this.  Do you hear that message from your Caucus or where do you think they are at?

Leader Pelosi.  To block what?

Q:  To block actions, air strikes, or anything in Iraq.

Leader Pelosi.  I don't – well, I don't know if the amendment – I salute her action in bringing it to the floor.  I don't know if it will win or it will prevail or become the law of the land, but it is certainly a worthy discussion.

Q:  Madam Leader? 

Leader Pelosi.  Yes, sir.

Q:  Can I ask you, you are going to have a new leadership team opposite you by close of business today.  And I'm wondering – you've been in closed-door meetings with Mr. McCarthy, the apparent frontrunner, as well as some of the other people in there.  Is there going to be any difference working with Kevin McCarthy as Majority Leader versus Eric Cantor as Majority Leader?  And what do you expect to see from him if he wins? 

Leader Pelosi.  I don't know that I have been in a closed door meeting with any of them, as a matter of fact.  I have been in closed-door meetings with the Speaker and the Leader, Mr. Cantor; maybe one every now and then with Mr. McCarthy.  I certainly know him as a Californian.  I wish him well, if it turns out as it appears to.  I congratulated him last night, and he said: "Not so soon,"  at the ball game, at the softball game.

And I don't know who will be the next person down.  But hopefully it will be people that we can all work together. Because that is what the American people expect and deserve of us here.  So I will look forward to working with whomever they choose to be their leaders.  I don't have an assessment of – you are saying closed door meetings – I don't have an assessment of some of the other people because I just haven't been – you know, I respect them and the rest.

But you give me an opportunity to say something that I probably should have said last week when you asked me: "Is there not one shred of," whatever, "sympathy for Mr. Cantor?"  Was that your question?

Q:  No, ma'am.  But I remember it. 

Leader Pelosi.  I was thinking about it on Sunday when I was praying for the Republicans in church, as I do at least every Sunday.  I pray for the Democrats and the Republicans – for our country.  And when I was there, I thought that I was kind of not complete in terms of my answer.  Because I have said over and over again, maybe you have heard me, that the biggest privilege that any of us has is to represent our district.  Whatever other honors our colleagues bestow on us, that is wonderful.  If you are the Leader or the Speaker of the House, that is a wonderful honor.  But there is almost – it is a funny thing, but the biggest honor of all is that your constituents have one person to choose to speak for them in the Congress of the United States.  It is such an honor.  And every day that you step on that floor, you are representing this nearly 800,000 people by their choice.  That doesn't mean they all voted for you or even that they all voted.  But nonetheless, you are the one.  There are 435 here, there is only one in your district.

So if I had any sympathy for what happened last week, it wasn't so much about toppling – of a leader falling – it was really more about how sad it must be to lose in your own district.  So for that, I have sympathy for Mr. Cantor, because that is hard.

Power comes and goes here.  But the connection that you have to your district is such a deeply rooted thing; more than a thing, such a deeply rooted strength to you, that I feel sad for him in that regard.

Q:  Madam Leader, there are reports that the President will ask to send up to a hundred Special Forces to Iraq.  What is your reaction to that? 

Leader Pelosi.  You know what – you don't expect me to react to "there are sources."  When the President makes his statement today, I will have a statement about it.

Q:  Are you comfortable, though, with that number or just troops on the ground in that respect? 

Leader Pelosi.  Let me just say generally speaking – and I will be interested in hearing what the President has to say – I think that you have to be careful sending Special Forces.  Because it is a number that has a tendency to grow.  And so, I would like to see the context, purpose, timeline, and all the rest for anything like that.  But I do – in any situation, under any President, I would say: let's proceed cautiously in that regard, without thinking that 100 is 100.

Yes, sir?

Q:  In yesterday's meeting, since you guys, the big four were all down there with the President, were there other topics discussed?  I mean, some short term policy things, like Highway Trust Fund or terror risk or Ex Im Bank? 

Leader Pelosi.  Well, the White House has put out their readout of the meeting.  It focused largely on Iraq.  But as you probably know going in, the President – the White House said it was about national security, including Iraq.

And so the President did give us a briefing of his view on Ukraine, and also as a follow up of his trip to Europe and the meetings that he had when he was there previous to D-Day and then leading up to D-Day, and interactions with foreign leaders and the rest.  I am sure if you ask the White House, they might tell you more about that.  But that is another subject we did talk about – Ukraine and what the possibilities are working with our allies to, again, resolve conflict in a peaceful way.

Yes, ma'am?

Q:  Yes.  Are you at all concerned that, with a push from the right and these Republican leadership elections, it may be hard to get certain fiscal bills accomplished this year like the Highway Trust Fund or Ex-Im Bank or TRIA? 

Leader Pelosi.  All three of those are urgently needed for the economy of our country.  They have really not been particularly partisan in the past.  Certainly, infrastructure and highway had always been one of the least partisan areas of legislative success in the Congress.

The TRIA is urgent.  It is really urgent – Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.  It is about terrorism risk.  We have passed this before with the heightened interest, of course, following 9/11.  But now it is time for reauthorization.  And for some reason, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee is very much opposed to the proposal that has support, public-private support, as a way to go forward.

The main difference is that we have $100 million backstop; you know, after $100 billion, then we come in.  He wants to make it $500 million.  Well, that is huge.  And what the consequence of that is, it is very hard for anyone who wants to build a building, a hotel, whatever, to get credit, because the exposure is so great.  And what is hard for us, especially with the hotel, is they can go some other place.  The hospitality industry is booming all over the world.  They don't have to fight for something in the U.S. if the exposure is so great that they can't get credit and therefore can't build.

So this is something that has no partisan – the first piece of legislation that I dealt with when I was Whip was the – became whip, '01, so I became whip in '02, 12 years ago, was terrorism risk insurance.  We dealt with the public-private, all the elements of this.  And what the private sector was proposing was very reasonable.  And we worked to get that done.  But it took a very long time because there was opposition on the other side.  We were in the minority at the time.

Five hundred thousand is a total, not a non-starter, it is a total deterrent.  So I would hope that in the leadership, other minds would prevail and that they would – their friends in the financial community, financial services, this is development, this is construction, it is so much in terms of jobs in our country, that other minds would prevail and they would support the, up until now, bipartisan nature of the proposal that is there.

Ex-Im Bank, another big job creator for us, brings money into the Treasury in five years – like over $1.5 billion dollars into the Treasury.  It is about how we support exports to our country.  Other countries do it too, fairly well, and our Republican colleagues call it corporate welfare.

Well, it is about small business, medium-size business, and big business.  Yes, Boeing does benefit from it, but that is important to us.  And there are lots of subcontractors involved.  So this may be more of an answer than you were expecting.

But the Ex Im Bank, again, shouldn't be a partisan issue.  And if they want to talk about corporate welfare, we have got plenty of their other friends we could be talking about rather than the Ex-Im Bank, which is job creator, deficit reducer, and absolutely essential in the world competition as we engage in global trade.

Highway – I think we talked about that a little bit the other day.

Yes, sir.

Q:  So with our options as limited as they are in Iraq, with what you know, do you think the United States can do effective counterterrorism in Iraq today?  And is it advisable that we try to cooperate with Iran to do so?

Leader Pelosi.  First question, we must do effective counterterrorism because the ISIS, or ISIL, whatever you want to call them, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria for one title, really is a counterterrorism challenge, a terrorism challenge for us, and we have do what is necessary.  That is different from being engaged in a sectarian war in Iraq.  You know, what is in our national interest in terms of counterterrorism?

I am not one who is interested in working with Iran on this.  I think you have to be open to where you can get support for things.  But I don't have a confidence level that – right now, we are trying to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon – that can't happen.  It is a funny thing – funny is not the word, funny in terms of peculiar, odd, strange thing that here we are talking about cooperating with Iran in terms of Iraq, possibly cooperating – I am not advocating it – when for so many years it was the Iran-Iraq War.  They were a check on each other.  On the basis of false information, willfully presented to the American people, we go into Iraq, free Iran to be Iran, no more border problems with Iraq, and acting in a way to support terrorists in Syria.

You know, problem all over, including our own development of a weapon of mass destruction, and they are free and clear because we took out their main – the main check on them, which was Iraq.

So I am not one who would be in a hurry to be having a conversation with Iran about this.  I am concerned that they think we are going to go in and they are going to go in after us.  But we are not going to go in.

Q:  On these missing IRS emails – your colleague Chairman Becerra expressed concern about being able to get to the bottom of this yesterday.  Are you likewise concerned, and do you think in any way that the two years of missing emails in any way lends credence to the argument that some Republicans are making, that some sort of show-game is going on here?

Leader Pelosi.  I don't know, I'm not familiar with Mr. Becerra's – with all the respect and confidence I have in him – I don't know what his statement was.  So I can't say I'm comfortable with it.  Usually I would be.  But I will say this: what the missing emails tell me – and I understand that there were six other sets of emails that were similarly missing – what it convinces me is that they need a new technology system at the IRS, A. B., we also have to view it in light of the fact that the IRS has turned over 750,000 pages of documents, something like 67,000 emails.  So it's not as if they are devoid of information.  I think that the reports all show that those responsible did not know about the years of the crash of their systems until a couple of years later.  So I think they need to upgrade their technology – get it right – so that there's no suspicion about what agenda anyone may have on that.

Thank you all very much.