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Transcript of Pelosi Interview on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered

April 27, 2020

Contact: Speaker's Press Office,
202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Michel Martin on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered for an interview to discuss the ongoing efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, including the recently passed interim emergency funding package transformed by Congressional Democrats to provide critical support for small businesses, hospitals, health care workers and a national testing strategy. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Michel Martin. In the past few weeks, with the support of both parties, Congress has passed four coronavirus bills to meet the economic and health care demands of this pandemic. The most recent one, signed by President Trump on Friday, allocated billions of dollars for small businesses, hospitals and widespread testing.

Now, Members of Congress are talking about what will be in the next piece of legislation, and if there will be one.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is, of course, one of the people setting that strategy and she is with us now. Madam Speaker, welcome. Thank you so much for talking to us.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure. I wish it were under different circumstances, but good to be with you.

Michel Martin. Likewise, thank you.

As we mentioned, this past week, Congress passed its fourth relief measure to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus. I know that the Republican Leader in the Senate initially came out with a much lower figure. Democrats held out for more, despite some more vulnerable Members and candidates being hammered for it by Republican groups in ads and so forth.

But others in your party, like New York Governor Cuomo, are saying there wasn't any money for state and local governments. The District of Columbia, for example, which got far less than it was expecting in earlier bill, still hasn't been made whole.

How do you defend this as the best you can get at this time?

Speaker Pelosi. It's not a question of defense. It is being very positive about what we did accomplish.

We had CARES 1. We announced immediately we would have CARES 2, which would have state and local, which would address the District of Columbia issue, which would have money for voting by mail, other initiatives in it.

They intervened and said, ‘Hey we need a quarter of a trillion dollars right away, in 48 hours.' And I said, ‘Well, we have to see how we address the small business distribution of funds.' And we were successful on getting the bill from $250 [billion] to $480 [billion], with a big chunk of money for those underbanked businesses and $100 billion for hospitals and testing.

We never stopped working on our CARES 2 bill. And we will go forward and we will have, in the legislation, as big a number as possible to reflect the needs of our state and local government. And that means, to help them address the outlays that they are making for the coronavirus and also to address the revenue loss that they are suffering.

So, I'm not defending anything. I'm very proud of what we did and I'm proud of my Members.

Michel Martin. And, to your point, speaking of your Members, just one House Democrat voted against the legislation, that was the New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her argument was basically that the bill doesn't go far enough to help working families. She wanted, for example, rent and mortgage relief to be included, for there to be an increase in the Paycheck Protection Program.

The unity of your Caucus in the House-side, and increasingly on the Senate-side, has been crucial, I think you would agree –

Speaker Pelosi. Of course.

Michel Martin. – to getting the result that you wanted.

Are you concerned that if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one vote that you didn't get in this round that there could be other progressives going forward who will not vote for this bill.

Speaker Pelosi. No. No, I'm not concerned at all. I'm not concerned at all.

Everybody has their vote that they make for whatever reason, but I'm more impressed that every other Democrats voted for that legislation. So, I don't know why we're going to focus on one person when overwhelmingly all the House Democrats and Senate Democrats were unified in how we went forward.

And that was remarkable. I am proud of the Senators, the Democratic Senators.

Michel Martin. So, let's go now to the topic of oversight, which is really just a fancy way of saying overseeing how the money you appropriate gets spent.

On Thursday, the House voted to establish a new oversight committee to monitor how the Administration implements the coronavirus relief money. House Republicans voted unanimously against the creation of a committee, saying that there are already other oversight committees that can do the same work and I think the implication being that this is an effort to damage President Trump politically. What's your response to that?

Speaker Pelosi. My response – my initiative of it – and I'm very proud that the Members voted for that. Now, it is the law for the rules of the House.

The point about this is that Republicans in the past, they had an oversight committees to destroy Planned Parenthood. You recall Benghazi and how long that went. Well, of course there were other committees that could have dealt with that. We didn't have a pandemic and 26 million people out of work. We do now.

And so, there is a need when we're talking about spending nearly $3 trillion in taxpayer money to make sure that there's no waste, fraud and abuse, no price gouging, no profiteering on this. This isn't about President Trump. This is about how this will be implemented.

Michel Martin. And just two more questions. Madam Speaker, the President announced that he will suspend – is suspending all payments of the World Health Organization for 60 to 90 days. And he indicated the funds may be spent elsewhere. Does he have the power to do that? Is the House going to ask the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the legality of this action, much as it did when the President withheld security funds for Ukraine?

Speaker Pelosi. The office has already spoken to the illegality of it. He can do it temporarily, but he can't do it as a policy. In other words, if he wants to hold up some money that is questionable in terms of its legality, but he cannot stop the money ever from going.

But that's neither here nor there. The money is one thing. It's a terrible thing. But worse than that, if you can believe it, worse than that is that he and the Secretary of State have been deleting any reference to the World Health Organization on any of our strategies on how we deal with the pandemic. That may be more harmful than just the money.

They're holding up a resolution at the Security Council of the United Nation, because they don't want the World Health Organization's involvement in the resolution and therefore in the plan to go forward.

But what they're doing it's not even – it's stupid. I mean, it's more than stupid. It's dangerous.

Michel Martin. Well that's my last question for you, speaking of the question of dangerousness – I mean – Madam Speaker, what do you see as the Democrats' primary role in this moment?

I mean, given that the President is on television sometimes for hours, almost every day, and sometimes the information that he provides, as you pointed out, I mean health officials are saying is dangerous as the recent incidents are – he now says that he was being sarcastic, but suggesting that people could inject bleach. I mean – and yet we see that local officials around the country were getting calls from people saying ‘Is this something that they should do?'

So is there something more that the Democrats could be doing to provide a different message around this time? What do you see as your primary role right now?

Speaker Pelosi. My primary role is to insist on the truth. On Easter Sunday, I had my own epiphany because that was the first that I could have time to really think and reflect and pray over this in a very concentrated way. And I had my own epiphany, so I came out of there saying, ‘We must insist upon the truth.'

This is a President who has called this a hoax. He said that it will go away magically. This is dangerous, and we cannot allow his dangerous words to be the predicate for a consideration of anything.

So, we see our role as insisting on the truth, insisting on policies that makes this fairer and to make sure that we are taking a measure as we go forward of the disparity in different communities – how this pandemic is striking communities of color and poor communities and the rest.

Michel Martin. That's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to us from the Capitol.

Madam Speaker, thank you so much for talking with us today. I hope we'll talk again.

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Michel.

Good luck to you. Thank you.

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