Transcript of Pelosi Interview on Bloomberg News’ Balance of Power

Contact: Speaker's Press Office,
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Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined David Westin on Bloomberg News' Balance of Power to discuss the ongoing efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, including the agreement on the interim emergency funding package transformed by Congressional Democrats to provide real support for small businesses, hospitals, health care workers and all Americans. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

David Westin. We're going to start today with a very special guest. She is the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, coming to us from the Capitol. Madam Speaker, thank you so much for joining us on a very busy week.

You have a big package – spending package – pending before the House after the Senate passed it, $484 billion.

Do you have any doubt the House will enact it this week? And do you need to do anything extraordinary, such as proxy voting to get it done?

Speaker Pelosi. No, we will be able to, in a very strong bipartisan way, to pass the legislation as it passed in a bipartisan way in the Senate.

It's nothing extraordinary about how we will vote, pretty standard fare. But we will take a recorded vote. In the Senate, they had unanimous consent, so they only needed a couple, a few Senators to be there. We are 430 Members now and we will need to have a quorum and a majority to get it passed. But we will.

David Westin. An awful lot in this bill. Something like $370 billion to replenish the PPP Program, including through some smaller lenders. $75 billion for hospitals, another $25 billion for testing. What is not in the bill that you think still needs to be done?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, first, let me say how pleased I am with what is in the bill. And I thank you for the opportunity to do so.

Two weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury called me and said he needed a quarter of a trillion dollars in 48 hours. That would mean that by tomorrow, two weeks ago, the Republican Leader went to the Floor and said, ‘It's $250 [billion] for the program and that is it, we are not making any other additions.' We objected, the Democratic Senators objected. We worked together for our proposal. They objected to that, made a counterproposal, which was resoundly rejected by the Republicans. And, for about one week, they refused to negotiate until last Thursday. Then they realized they had no chance just to do the $250 [billion].

There was so much more urgency. And, in the bill, we of course support the $250 [billion], that was part of what we helped put together in the CARES Act. We support our small businesses, their entrepreneurial spirit, their optimism, their source of jobs and creation of wealth in our country. There is no question that we would be supporting that. But it took a longer time than it should have to agree that we needed to make sure that even the smallest of small businesses would be included in that, and that we would be addressing our health needs because the key to opening our economy, the key is testing, testing, testing. And we got $25 billion, as you mentioned, and the $75 billion to our hospital for all of the purposes that that serves.

And so, finally, they agreed to a package we put on the Floor at the time. In fact, we even did more.

We can move on to the next phase, if you wish, now.

David Westin. Does this take care of the rescue part as opposed to the recovery? In the past you've talked about rescue versus recovery. And talk specifically about assistance to state and local governments, do you regard that as part of rescue or recovery and what are the prospects of getting that done?

Speaker Pelosi. I always placed it in three phases. First, emergency. And that is what we did in the first few bills that we passed in March in a strong bipartisan way.

We started with testing, testing, testing on March [4th]. Here we are, a month and a half later, and the Administration has not fully implemented it. After this bill, hopefully they will.

So that was part of recovery. And then we went into mitigation, to mitigate for the damage to the economy with these initiatives to protect our small businesses, to provide more assistance in terms of health care and the rest. And now we have to go further into mitigation, unfortunately, to help state and local.

Now, state and local means this: it means the health care worker, the police and fire, the first responders, the emergency services people, the teachers in our schools, the transportation workers who get vital – essential workers to work. Again, it is about the people. And these people are risking their lives to help save other lives and now they are losing their jobs.

So, it's very essential that for our heroes – I call it our Heroes Act – that we have this assistance to state, county and local government, and to do so in a significant way. To recognize the lost revenue that they have from a lack of a stream of revenue because of the economy, and secondly the outlays that they make in order to address the coronavirus tragedy.

David Westin. So, take us through, if you would, some of your thinking on your strategy –

Speaker Pelosi. So, again, we are already working on that bill.

Sorry, excuse me.

David Westin. That's what I want to talk about, that bill. Take us through your strategy in agreeing to this approach, leaving out state and local. You did get, as you said, hospitals and you got testing in and protection for some of the smallest companies. But, did you run the risk, perhaps, of not getting the state and local, certainly not anytime soon? Because now we have Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, saying he thinks he is maybe, sort of, done going forward. Even Steven Mnuchin, your partner in negotiating is saying he is not sure we need a lot more. Are you concerned we will not be able to get the state and local anytime soon?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, first of all, let me remind you, this is the same Mitch McConnell who said on the Floor of the Senate two Thursdays ago, ‘There is no way we will do anything but the $250 [billion],' and now we are up to $480 [billion] that the Democrats were able to add for smaller businesses and for the health and well-being of the American people. So, that is an interesting statement, but it isn't the fact.

This is an interim bill. We didn't expect to have an interim bill, except after the Secretary's call. So, we went from CARES 1, and then we were going to go on to CARES 2, and CARES 2 would have been about state and local. So, we got everything we asked for on the Floor of the Senate and more two weeks ago. They should've agreed then instead of holding it up to what they agreed to yesterday.

But in terms of state and local, the President himself has even said, he has tweeted out – this was last night – that he is ready to do state and local, that he knows there has to be another bill and there are other measures that need to be addressed in that legislation. It is going to be a major package. It's going to address, again, the needs of the states and localities because that is where much of the health care delivery is, in public hospitals and the rest, as well as testing and that is in our bill that will be dispersed, some of it, to many of the states, some of the money for testing, and also the lost revenue.

This is a very important point. The lost revenue is something we will have addressed in this next CARES package, to recognize that piece of it and that it has to be compensated for, and funds used – given to the states, can be used for that, because it is all coronavirus related. Everything we do is coronavirus related.

So it is with great optimism that we go forward with this. We are well down the path to do it. It was never intended to be an interim bill because we did not know an interim bill would exist. We are using the bill to make the argument that this needed to be done as soon as possible, and it will.

David Westin. As you say, it is all coronavirus related, which is terribly important. We obviously have a massive problem and Congress has already done a massive amount to try to address it. Are you concerned, and is there any way to protect against the possibility of politics entering it? There were some reports that, for example, the PPP, the first PPP that went out, that there was disproportionate amounts going to some states that – let's be frank – tend to vote Republican rather than Democrat. Can you do anything to make sure this is going to the places that needed the most, rather than for some political reason?

Speaker Pelosi. I can't hear him. What did he say?

David, unfortunately our audio is not working. All I heard you say is, ‘Are you concerned at all?' And, so I do not know what the rest of it was but, I am not a person who gets concerned. I see everything as an opportunity.

And I see this as an opportunity for us to be able to meet the needs of the American people in a way that takes us forward to open up our economy very soon. The key to that is testing, testing, testing. The key to that is testing and contact tracing and isolation. We know how to get it done and the sooner we do that, science, science, science is the answer to opening up government and I wish that everyone would share that view.

There has been a reluctance on the part of this Administration to respect science, knowledge, data, evidence. And that's – information and fact is how you make decisions. And there has also been a reluctance to accept the role of government in the solution. If you reject science and you reject government, then you can see why we are in the situation we are in.

That is exactly what the President did from the start: ‘It is a hoax,' rejects science. ‘It will magically disappear,' rejects science. ‘We don't have to do anything about it because it will magically go away,' rejects governance. And that delay and that denial caused deaths.

And my concern is that we are working together in a positive way to support the lives and livelihoods of the American people.

David Westin. I apologize for the technical difficulties.

Speaker Pelosi. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what I'm thinking.

David Westin. It does largely, and it's great to have. I will try to speak up a little more, some technical difficulties here. The question I was asking is this needs to go for coronavirus – and specifically for need, how do we make sure that these funds – these massive funds are not distributed with any political reason involved? Because with the PPP – there was some suggestion more funds were going to some of the states that tend vote Republicans. Are you confident this is going where it needs to go rather than where it might be politically exigent to go?

Speaker Pelosi. Of course not. But anyway, I think the public display of it – Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything. With it you can accomplish almost everything and without it, practically nothing.' The idea that they would have distributed those funds in a way that was not in furtherance of ending this pandemic is totally irresponsible, but not surprising, because they have rejected science and governance, as I said.

So, again, we will have a bright light shining on this, whether it is the panel set up by the CARES Act for a panel in the Congress of the United States. I myself, tomorrow, will be introducing a select committee on oversight for the coronavirus, strictly about coronavirus, and how everything functions in the best possible way: non-partisan, non-political, science-based as we go forward.

I might add to that, that I do think it is not too soon, it should have been done even earlier. We have to get ready for what comes next. How do we open up government? How do we do so in a way that does not contribute to a return of the virus? If we have – God willing – a vaccine soon, how is that distributed – not in a political way, but in a way that meets the needs of the American people? That would be sinful. But it is a challenge, and proper preparation prevents poor performance. That is what the Boy Scouts say. I wish the President would act like a Boy Scout in that regard and would be thinking ahead – not just unprepared. Not just to look back to some of his statements, but he cannot continue to misrepresent the facts to the American people and expect us to accept the deaths that go with that.

David Westin. Madam Speaker, final question. Looking forward the way you say we need to be doing seems exactly right. What do you look forward to in terms of an election in November? Do you have any sense of what that may look like, as you say, to make sure people are safe, but they do get to express their views at the polls?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I thank you for that. I do not think anything we are doing now should have anything political about it. Every bill that we have passed has been strongly bipartisan – three in March and then this additional bill. As we go forward, it will be bipartisan as well.

One of the things that we want in the new bill is more funding to protect the integrity of our elections. As you saw the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan way, released a report saying that without any question, the investigation into the Russian interference into our election was substantiated. It was non-partisan. It was based on fact. The Intelligence Committee tells us still the Russians are 24/7 trying to disrupt our election again.

So, we want to protect the integrity of our critical infrastructure of elections. We also want to be able to have people vote by mail. Especially at a time of concern about health issues, it is better for them to vote by mail to get their ballots sent to them at home, to have same-day registration for those who want to go to the polls, but to have the demand on poll watchers and the rest be much, much less.

We will be seeking additional funds. We had $400 million in the first CARES Act. We need much more than that now, so that we can guarantee the integrity of our elections.

We are talking about the lives of the American people, the livelihood of our economy – their livelihood, the strength of our economy and the integrity of our elections – the life of our democracy. This is very, very important. Now more than ever, more important to be able to vote by mail.

David Westin. Madam Speaker, thank you so very much for your time today. That is Nancy Pelosi. She is Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure, David. Thank you so much.

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