Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference Today

Contact: Drew Hammill/Evangeline George, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi held her weekly press conference today. Below is a transcript of the press conference.

Leader Pelosi. Good morning, everyone. Sadly, we all awakened this morning to the very sad news of the EgyptAir plane going down. Of course, our prayers and thoughts are with the families, mostly Egyptians, French, and then some other countries, some children. They said even infants. So tragic, so sad.

And back here, we have faced some challenges since last week. We passed the May 15 date, which is when we were expecting a budget from the Republican side. No matter how bad the budget was, a road to ruin, it still wasn't bad enough to get a majority vote from the Republican side. I said over and over: Show us your values, show us your budget. That's where we see the values.

And here we had a series of actions of these last – in this short period of time that show a complete difference in values.

It has been almost 90 days since the President submitted his emergency supplemental request for Zika. House Republicans have dawdled, delayed, obstructed while mosquito season nears. Voting, after last night, four times to block the 1.9 [billion] emergency Zika supplemental that the President has asked for. The Republicans found time in the recent – leading up to now, for five weeks of recess but no time to act on this crisis with the urgency it deserves.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director of the CDC, said: “Never before in history has there been a situation where a bite from a mosquito can result in devastating fetal malformations. These children born, not only are they physically deformed, but they may never walk. They may never talk. They may never see. They may never hear. It will cost $10 million to take care of a child, the lifetime of a child so affected.”

The House Republican bill is reckless and radically unequal to the seriousness of the threat. Just think of it this way: They gave less than one‑third of what the President asked for. They didn't make it an emergency. So they took the funds from other investments, like Ebola, which have their purpose and should be left intact.

But the really shocking part of this – and you wonder, I know they don't really value science, but this one even goes beyond that – less than one‑fifth was requested for the CDC public health activity. This is the point of the spear in addressing a public health emergency. Around $750 million was asked for for the CDC for prevention, for vector control, money to go into communities to fight this. And they got $100‑, $750‑, they got $120 million. It is appalling. It is stunning.

And the mayors, the governors, the local – the first line of defense is where people live – they really need this assistance. It may sound – of course, it sounds like a lot of money, but it is a small price to pay for the public health of our country, for the well‑being of our families at a time when these mosquitos – for the first time, if you get bitten by a mosquito – and that virus can be sexually transmitted – it can cause malformations in our children. As summer approaches, the intensity of the need increases. This is appalling.

At the same time, yesterday, we had a markup on nutrition. You wouldn't believe what I would tell you about what the debate was there. I commend [Congressman] Bobby Scott and House Democrats for being very calm and reserved as they made the case about [what] a country as great as America should be feeding its children. And to hear the Republican response to that and the fact that it was a party‑line vote about whether we feed our children, give them the proper nutrition, is, again, show me your values, show me your budget.

Yesterday, we had on the floor the defense bill. I'm very pleased that our Members have agreed to sustain a Presidential veto of such a bill, a bill that Ash Carter, our Secretary of Defense, has said is deeply troubling and flawed; gambling with warfighters' money at a time of war dispirits our troops and their friends, baffles friends and emboldens foes. Just amazing. And then the leadership of the committee on the Republican side goes to the floor and says: If you don't vote for the defense bill, you are not supporting our troops. That is not true. And I remind all of you, if you have forgotten our work here, that, in 2010, when we were successful in the majority of placing a repeal of ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ in the Defense Authorization bill, the same bill that was on the floor yesterday, guess how many Republicans voted for the Defense Authorization bill that year with the repeal of ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ in it? A single digit: Nine. Nine. It is like, do they have no memory of their own actions? Nine. So we don't need any lectures from them about how we support our troops.

The President's proposal and the Secretary of Defense, they have made clear the difference between really protecting our troops or the gimmickry, the budget gimmickry they have come up with. Also, in this bill, they, in a dead-of-night amendment, added in markup a provision to overturn President Obama's historic executive order banning anti‑LGBT discrimination by Federal contractors. Last night, on an MTR, the House Republicans voted unanimously to support overturning the President's executive order, and they in turn are supporting discrimination in the workplace. As we showed last night, Democrats will uphold the President's view, though, of this reckless and discriminatory legislation.

I know some of you are interested in Puerto Rico. We have a bipartisan agreement now, a bill that has been dropped. Of course, it would not be the bill we had written, but it does contain a restructuring that can work, that calls for the board, the oversight board, to treat everyone equally and fairly. And by that I mean pensioners and the rest, and it is not a bailout. Contrary to the misleading – God knows who is paying for them – ads on TV that this is a bailout of Puerto Rico, it is not. The White House, Speaker's office and our office and others participated in coming to an agreement, but, as I said, not the bill I would have written – that goes without saying – but a bill that we can support. Others who would make their – are reviewing the legislation, some of our Members who have been very interested in Puerto Rico. The Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Grijalva, has been very thoughtful through this process. And we hope – what we would like to do is to act expeditiously in providing the President with the names of people to appoint to the board; that's the next step – and we hope that we can move it quickly through committee markup, pass the legislation Puerto Rico so urgently needs.

Do you have any questions? Yes, ma'am.

Q: Leader Pelosi, Donald Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court Justices. What do you think of his releasing that list, and do you know about any of those…

Leader Pelosi. You know, to tell you the truth, Zika, opioids, Puerto Rico, the Defense bill, the bill that is on the floor now, nutrition, I haven't been paying attention to his list. I'm so sorry. I haven't had time for that. Yes, sir.

Q: Donald Trump said this morning that the EgyptAir crash, quote, "looks like a terrorist attack." Do you believe that it was a terrorist attack and is there any evidence that you have seen or are aware of that would support that claim?

Leader Pelosi. No. I don't think any of us know. Right now, we are in a prayerful mode for the families who lost their loved ones, the tragedy of it all. And I was hearing some of the experts, who do know about some of these things, on TV saying that we have to get more information to determine whether this is a mechanical malfunction or what. The “Hero of the Hudson” was on this morning, and he was saying that when you are faced with a situation like that, the lowest priority is talking about what is going on. You are addressing the issues. So we just don't know.

I certainly hope not, but as others have said, anything is possible, and we have to get more information. So just acting upon no information, I am not going to go to that place.

Yes, sir.

Q: We've seen tension between the Sanders' campaign, the DNC, and the divided Democratic Party. Just overheard from our folks here meeting with Donald Trump's representatives, they said, well, it looks like the Republicans are trying to coalesce around their candidate. There's all of this dissidence in that trifecta of the DNC, the Democratic Party, and the Sanders side. Does that contribute to greater dissidence on the Democratic side and how do you fix that?

Leader Pelosi. Well, welcome to the Democratic Party. I have, as you probably know, been a State party chair, chaired the California Democratic Party, the largest party in the country. I'm very proud to say that. And the exuberance of our Members is always something wonderful to behold and, at some point, to channel. The difference between what you are talking about here is just how – within the family disagreement.

But the distance in terms of issues and values and priorities between Hillary Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and Senator Sanders is like this compared to the chasm of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on some of the issues I talked about: how we feed our children; how we address our public health issues; how we fund our opioids initiative, where we had bipartisan support; how we deal with Flint and what that means to children in our country. Our values are very different, and they are reflected in our budget, and that's what the debate will be about.

I think it's – again, I have seen the exuberance of Democrats. I condemn any violence that happens at any meeting, for sure. One thing that I do want to reject, however, too, is I saw one show – one of the early morning shows had harkening back to the 1968 convention. I was at the 1968 convention. I went with my Baltimore family, the D'Alesandros. My brother was then the mayor of Baltimore in his 30s. My father was a senior statesman and a big, ardent Humphrey supporter. And it is nothing, I mean, to even suggest is really, I think, ridiculous – nothing in common. We were at war in Vietnam. That fueled the unhappiness. That matter was handled in a way that was not appropriate.

But this is an incident. That was a colossal coming together of people – not coming together – clashing of people who had completely a different view about the war and how we go forward.

Q: What is fueling this, though, in the Democratic Party? You call it exuberance. There was some violence, there were threats.

Leader Pelosi. Yeah.

Q: But what's...

Leader Pelosi. Well, here is the way I see it. Again, harkening back to my own experience as a chairman and one who has – you know, for 20 years, I served on the DNC – my own view of some of this is that when you have a lot of new people who are attracted during a campaign – and that's the beauty of a campaign, an ever‑widening circle of people who now pay attention in a Presidential year. Many of them are not familiar with what to expect. And we all have a responsibility to try to make sure people know what to expect and what to expect is that there are rules that exist.

For example, in Nevada, my understanding is that the chairs of the Credentials Committee were, one, a Bernie person and, one, a Hillary person. But whatever was transmitted in the meeting did not allay the concerns of some who thought the calculation of delegates was not favorable enough to Bernie.

But there is a responsibility that we all have to make sure people know, especially when they are coming in with such exuberance about issues they care about, their jobs, their economic security and the rest, that now has to be within a structure.

Second, so, again, nothing to be surprising about people being disappointed about an outcome of a decision that the Party makes. No excuse for any violence whatsoever. Secondly, as you probably know, for at least 30 years, since this all began, I have been very much opposed to superdelegates. I think it just makes people think: Wait a minute; we are going through an elective process, and then you are telling me that 500 people in Washington, D.C., are going to weigh in at the end. I really think that – I have said this year in and year out, so this is nothing new – that we should be revisiting the number of votes that superdelegates have. Maybe give them a pass, maybe give them a pass to the hall or a seat on the floor, but not to undermine to make it look like there is something else that will weigh in after everyone goes through the electoral process.

Is that more than you want to know on the subject?

Q: Madam Leader. Madam Leader, can you tell us about the vote that's coming to the floor on the Confederate flag at veteran cemeteries?

Leader Pelosi. Yes, so, this, as I was watching the proceedings last night until 1 in the morning – that is after the Golden State Warriors just raged – just raged, right? You are just looking very non-committal there.

Q: It's one to one. It's one to one.

Leader Pelosi. Okay. Back to the seriousness of it. I did watch the proceedings last night. I saw that our colleague offered an amendment that said, that would say that there shouldn't be a Confederate flag on a veterans’ cemetery, and it will come up for a vote today.

Q: Did you feel you had to force the vote though? Is it…

Leader Pelosi. No, no, this is an initiative by my colleagues. Quite frankly, I thought most of those matters were dealt with on the Interior Committee. If anybody had any interest in doing so, they could do it at Interior. But apparently there is another category that falls under the Veterans' Affairs Committee. So this is an initiative from the Members. Any time you have hundreds of amendments on a Defense bill and then this bill all coming together, you have a lot of individual initiative.

I certainly support what Congressman Huffman and his colleagues, co-sponsors Mr. [Ruben] Gallego and Mr. [Keith] Ellison, are putting forth.

Q: Madam Leader, on Senator Sanders again. Do you believe that he continues to be a positive support force in the party?

Leader Pelosi. Yes.

Q: And the campaign?

Leader Pelosi. Absolutely.

Q: And do you have any concerns that with the anger of some of his supporters, it will be hard for him to bring them back into the fold, and does he have the responsibility to start doing that now or soon to get them behind Hillary?

Leader Pelosi. Well, I think that he will stay in the race. Candidates do. Senator Clinton did ‑‑ as Senator Clinton in 2008. When we hosted the convention in San Francisco in 1984, you would have thought it was a Gary Hart convention, even though Walter Mondale was the nominee, because so many people came as Hart delegates and brought their enthusiasm, wanted to have their impact on the platform and the rules on how the party went forward.

So I believe, again, rejecting any violence on the part of whomever was at that meeting, I believe that Bernie Sanders is a positive force in the Democratic Party. He has awakened in some people an interest in the political process that wasn't there. He has encouraged young people to channel their interest in public service and community leadership into a political place because this is where decisions are made that will affect their future, their lives, and I think that's all positive.

Q: Leader Pelosi.

Leader Pelosi. Yes. I'm going to have to go because they called the next vote.

Q: The Senate Zika bill doesn't have – the spending is not offset. Are you hopeful that that's going to be possible in whatever compromise comes out of both chambers, and is that really what the fight is about, whether this money is offset? It seems like Republicans agree that Zika is a problem.

Leader Pelosi. The problem is twofold. I don't support the Senate initiative either because it's not enough. People say, as I said to you last week, some of you last week, they said it's half a loaf. No. It's half a shoe. You cannot get to where you need to be with half a shoe. It's not half a loaf.

In terms of what is needed for the public health emergency and the prevention, the vector control of mosquitos, et cetera, we need more resources. In terms of the research in the House bill, NIH does better than the CDC but still doesn't have a complete funding to do the research.

So there are two problems. One, it's not enough, and two, in the House, it's coming out of other priorities, at the same time competing for funds for opioids. We passed 18 bills on opioids. Not one red cent. But we have got to fund the opioids. We have got to fund Zika. We've got to do something about Flint. And we have a budget agreement that was a compromise, so there isn't a lot of room for $3 billion more for opioids and Zika. That has to be emergency spending. So it would be two things. It's not enough, and it should be emergency spending, just emergency supplemental, just as any other public health emergency would be.

And I'm hopeful that as the public learns more about this, you have to get in front of an epidemic of this nature. And this is freakish. Just to let you know, just so you know, suppose you go someplace, Brazil, let's use Brazil, and you get bitten by the mosquito that carries the Zika virus, well, it is sexually transmitted. We don't know for how long that capability exists in a person who is bitten. You come home. Another mosquito bites you – garden variety mosquito – that mosquito now is a Zika carrier. So the proliferation of this is really something very different than we have seen in the past. That is it is sexually transmitted it is new and different, and that it causes malformation in a developing fetus is stunning.

So this is very big. Why would you not get in front of it? Why would you not make the investment that is going to be the humanitarian thing to do? Honor our responsibilities in terms of public health and, by the way, save money in the outcome in the long run because you won't be spending $10 million for a lifetime to care for a child that probably won't be able to walk, talk, hear, or see, be malformed, and the tragedy of all of that, of course, is the biggest price to pay.

So, again, it's about the budget. What is it that they are saying? You have got to go within the budget of Health and Human Services, which is a lamb‑eat‑lamb budget. Everything in there is good. You can't find – it's very hard to find money to offset, much less big money to offset. So we are just calling – this is as important as it gets to the well‑being of the American people. Again, sounds like a lot of money when you hear it, but it's a small price to pay for the health and well‑being of the American people. Thank you all very much.

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