Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

Contact: Speaker's Press Office,

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Mika Brzezinski. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, attempts to revive the stalled coronavirus relief talks yesterday yielded more finger pointing than deal making. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but their conversation effectively went nowhere. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement reading in part, ‘Democrats have compromised. Repeatedly, we have made clear to the Administration that we are willing to come down $1 trillion if they come up $1 trillion. However, it's clear the Administration still does not grasp the magnitude of the problem that American families are facing.'

Mnuchin hit back in a statement of his own, claiming that it's, ‘…not an accurate reflection of our conversation. Pelosi made clear that she was unwilling to meet to continue negotiations unless we agreed in advance to her proposal of at least $2 trillion. The Democrats have no interest in negotiating.'

Joining us now, the Speaker of the House, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Madam Speaker, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you. I want to start with the Post Office –

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you. Good morning.

Mika Brzezinski. Good morning. I just – is there any scenario in which you all come to a deal and get something passed that does not include the Post Office getting shored up?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, good morning, Mika. Good to see you.

Let me just say this. It was so strange to hear the Secretary's statement because he exactly quoted what happened in our meeting. Come in with $2 trillion and we can negotiate how we spend that, so it was weird. I think they're losing it in some respect.

Here's the thing. In the legislation, we have $25 billion. That is the number that is recommended by the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service, a bipartisan Board of Governors one hundred percent appointed by Donald Trump. They recommended $25 billion. Earlier, in earlier COVID bills, the President has stood in the way of any money for the Postal Service. If the President read the Constitution, he would say that the Postal Service is memorialized there and Congress has a role in all of this.

So, again, when they're talking about the Post Office, they're talking about the fact that in 2019, for example, an enormous amount of medicine, let me just say, 1.2 billion prescriptions, 1.2 billion prescriptions were delivered through the mail. Almost a hundred percent of the Veterans [Administration's] prescriptions going through the mail. So, they're hurting seniors. It's a health issue in 2019, it's even more so in the time of the pandemic.

So, when the President goes after the Postal Service, he's going after an all-American, highly approved-by-the-public institution. As we would say before you were born: motherhood, apple pie, the Postal Service, an all-American institution. I heard you earlier talk about what it means in terms of connecting family. We're talking here about how it delivers medicine. And, again, at the time of a pandemic, how necessary it is for us to have the mail so that the people do not have to choose between their health and their vote. They can vote absentee. And by the way, the President's family was all out in California urging absentee ballots during the special election in the spring, so this is nonetheless, yet again, another, shall we say, contradiction.

Joe Scarborough. So, you're telling us that Donald Trump's own appointed Board of Governors, the United States Post Office, is asking for $25 billion, so you're actually just trying to deliver what the Board of Governors Donald Trump appointed is saying the United States Post Office needs, right?

Speaker Pelosi. That's right. Actually, they asked for more, they asked for another $25 billion for infrastructure, logistics, trucks and all that, but we put that in our Moving Forward infrastructure bill, which we hoped the President would support, but not in this bill. This is what is necessary now.

Now, again, this is a matter of negotiation, about timing, for how long and as you indicated, there have been some – I don't want to confirm anything, I don't know how you get your information, but there is a reason to believe that they were willing to go to $10 billion. But the President did exactly what he did in previous COVID bills, stood in the way. But this is in the context of not understanding the gravity of the situation, as we said, Chuck and I – Leader Schumer and I said in our statement. We are in a situation where this is – the President makes this like the only part of the discussion, this and the mail, the absentee ballots. He calls it absentee. Happy to call it that. He says mail-in is bad, absentee is good. Okay. Call it absentee.

But it's – the money is not just for that. The money is for a healthy way to vote, whether it's absentee or if in-person with the correct spacing, the number of polling places, again, to accommodate the space that is needed, the timing, the number of days and the rest for that to happen. So, the money is not just about absentee ballots.

But again, this happens at a time when they're not facing the facts of it. One of the big stumbling blocks, of course, is they don't want to do what is necessary for state and local government. There is bipartisan support in the Senate for that, but they have an ideological opposition, as Mitch McConnell said, ‘Let them go bankrupt.' So, that's what we're working back from.

But if we're going to educate our children, we have to have the facts in terms of what is needed. And they're rejecting the expert recommendations of the American Association of Superintendents of Schools. They said, ‘We have our own numbers,' but they don't meet the needs of our children.

If you're going to educate children, it's not just about our federal dollars in emergency, which are essential. It's about state and local government, which do over 90 percent of the educating of our children. So, it's about the children. Let me just say, just yesterday – you know everything I do is about the children. That's the reason I – you know, having five children of my own, nine grandchildren. I worry about everyone's children in America, of course.

I have advice for them when they want it or not. One of the things that is so terrible is in this epidemic, because we're saying we have to assault the virus, we have to defeat the virus, contain the virus, stop the spread and that means we have to have testing, tracing, treatment, masks, spacing, all the rest of it. And we especially have to look into the minority community, which is suffering an undue, disproportionate impact of this virus. Think of this, a Hispanic child is eight times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus than other children, eight times. An African American child is five times more likely to be hospitalized from the virus than other children. This is a challenge to our conscious.

But, again, they refuse to face the gravity of the situation and listen to scientists and tell us what we need to do. And with their school money that they have, they want to spend the overwhelming bulk of it in only schools that open up, when 62 of the largest school districts in the country have said that, 62, that they're going 100 percent virtual. Another dozen or so more say hybrid, virtual and hybrid, and a small percentage saying they will actually open up with physical presence. That's fine if the rate of infection in the community justifies schools opening. But you can't say, ‘Unless you open, we're withholding money from you – open actually, or withholding money.'

Joe Scarborough. Yeah. Mike Barnicle is with us and has a question for you, Madam Speaker.

Mike.

Speaker Pelosi. Hi, Mike.

Mike Barnicle. Madam Speaker, later this morning, it's expected that 1.1 million Americans will file for the first time for unemployment benefits. Millions have already file for unemployment benefits across this country. Apparently, the federal benefits, that program is sitting dead on the table between you and your negotiations with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chief of Staff and the White House.

My question to you is, during your discussions, you and Senator Schumer, during your discussions with Mr. Meadows and Mr. Mnuchin, is it ever raised, the fact that millions of Americans who have lost their jobs will take months and years to recover economically, some will never recover economically, some of the jobs that have been lost will never come back? Do you talk about these things?

Speaker Pelosi. We talk about the economy. But let me just say, I'm sorry to hear that. You have advanced knowledge of the number, that it will be over a million. That would be the 21st week in a row, 21st consecutive week where over one million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. This is a tragedy. And when we're talking, you know, we are talking compassionately about what it means to people, what it means to seniors to get their medicine, what it means to children to safely go to school, what it means to families to have – be safe from eviction and money in the pockets.

But what it means to the economy, forgetting compassion, because frankly, we don't have any shared values when it comes to compassion and caring about people. They're in the trickle-down mode, and we're in the bubble-up mode. But if you just think in terms of the economy, the economy is strengthened by the fiscal soundness of state and local government. The economy is strengthened by a bigger infusion of federal dollars into helping, putting money in the pockets of people, so they can spend it. They inject demand into the economy. It creates jobs. It strengthens the economy.

The Chairman of the Fed, economists tell over and over, ‘Pay now or pay later.' So, again, our best shot with them is to say, all you care about, in our view, is the stock market. We know that the Fed is shoring up the credit markets, the markets, so that the markets can soar. Maybe that's a good idea, but why can't we spend some trillion more, trillions of dollars to shore up America's working families? Yes, we have that discussion. And what is so heartbreaking is, you know, if we, today, said we yield to your position, it still wouldn't help those children, those families and across the board, meeting this needs of the American people.

In fact, what they want to do in terms of state and local, will probably result in four million people being laid off. They aren't interested in that fact. When we talk about what state and local government does, they are interested when we say and there will be more people unemployed going onto the unemployment ranks. That perks their interest.

Joe Scarborough. All right. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as always, thank you for being with us. We always greatly appreciate it.

Mika Brzezinski. Thank you.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure.