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Pelosi: 'We Are Making Great Progress' On Economic Recovery Package

January 13, 2009

Pelosi: ‘We Are Making Great Progress’ On Economic Recovery Package

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Contact:Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C.â€" Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Democratic House and Senate leaders held a media availability late this afternoon prior to their bicameral meeting on the economic recovery package. Below are the Speaker’s opening remarks and an answer to a question from a reporter:

"Good afternoon. We are about to go into a bicameral House and Senate Democratic leadership meeting to make further progress on the economic recovery package. All afternoon, House Democratic leaders and relevant chairmen were meeting to go over the particulars of the package as we saw it.

"I’m pleased to announce that from my standpoint, we are making great progress and that we fully intend to meet our deadline of having a package passed and signed into law, to begin the economic recovery of our country, before we leave for the President’s Day recess.

"And as I have said, if we are not finished, we are not leaving. We won’t leave here without an economic recovery package. But I feel quite certain that we will be able to do it sooner rather than later."

Q: Next week, will committees mark up the stimulus bill? And when you say there is progress, will you give us details of where progress is being made on the floor?

Speaker Pelosi. "Well, progress is getting us to the point where we will take the bill to the floor and send it to the President. That’s our goal. We have goals hour to-hour, and day-to-day, and right now, our goal is to get the bill into print and we have to make some final decisions from that standpoint on the House side.

"But yes, we will have markups next week. Thank you all very much."