Pelosi Remarks at Photo Opportunity with Vice President Biden

March 25, 2009

Pelosi Remarks at Photo Opportunity with Vice President Biden
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Contact:Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami, 202-226-7616
Washington, D.C. â€" Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a photo opportunity with Vice President Joe Biden this afternoon before their lunch in the Capitol. Below are their remarks:
Speaker Pelosi. Good afternoon.
It is a great honor to welcome Vice President Biden to the Capitol. For over 30 years he has served the people of Delaware with such distinction â€" he is no stranger to this building.
But on the House side, it is a special pleasure to welcome him over here. He has many friends here â€" relationships developed over the years around issues of concern to the American people. Many of those same issues are contained now in the budget of the Obama-Biden Administration.
As we speak here now, the House Budget Committee is meeting, and I know at the end of the day we will have a strong budget, supportive of the Presidentâ€™s principles of investing in education, health care and energy, reducing the deficit, and creating good-paying jobs in America by giving a tax cut to 95 percent of the American people.
Iâ€™m proud of the leadership of John Spratt, our Chairman, and the work of the Democratic Members of the Budget Committee. I hope that the bill will pass with some bipartisan support, but I know the bill will pass as a strong statement of national values and we are content to deliver, for the President, in the House of Representatives.
Again, I am delighted to welcome the Vice President to discuss the budget and other issues that challenge our country, congratulate him for his great leadership to our country and the opportunities that the Obama-Biden Administration has presented to our country.
With that, I am pleased to welcome the Vice President.
Vice President Biden. Well, thank you Madam Speaker.
This is a continuation of an ongoing dialogue. Weâ€™ve had most of it down at the White House, but when the Speaker invited me to lunch â€" a free lunch â€" so I decided to come on up and it gives me a chance to go back home. I have to admit to you, Madam Speaker, I got here a little early and I snuck over to see my colleagues on the Senate floor â€"
Speaker Pelosi. â€¦for just an instantâ€¦
Vice President Biden. â€¦and they kept saying, "Where are you going? Where are you going?" And I said that Iâ€™m goingâ€¦
Look, I am confident that with the leadership of the Speaker and Harry Reid, weâ€™re going to get our budget with all of the major elements intact â€" and I think that our budget willâ€¦.I am absolutely confident that we will cut the deficit in half within five years, and Iâ€™m absolutely confident that â€" you heard the President last night state â€" repeatedly and eloquently â€" that weâ€™re in a position where that in order to rebuild this economy, it canâ€™t be built on a false bubble. It canâ€™t be built on a dot-com bubble or on a housing bubble. We have to get down to rebuilding an economy that produces a solid foundation for the better part of the beginning of the century and that requires us to deal with education, with health care, and it requires us to deal with energy, and also budget discipline building in itself.
The Speaker and I are going to talk a little bit about the budget â€" I expect weâ€™ll talk about a lot of other things as well. But I feel very confident that we are going to get a budget that is totally consistent with and reflective of all weâ€™ve asked for in the budget we submitted to the Congress.
So Iâ€™m looking forward to lunch. Thanks. Thank you all very much.
Speaker Pelosi. Thank you.