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Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference Today

October 8, 2015

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.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released the budget review showing that the deficit fell to $435 billion in fiscal year 2015, a $48 billion reduction from the year before. When President Obama took office, the deficit was $1.4 trillion. That is a reduction of a trillion dollars in the deficit since the President took office.

Part of the progress is thanks to the landmark success of the ACA in holding down healthcare costs, the growth of healthcare costs. From 2011 to 2013, national health expenditure per capita grew at the slowest rate since we began keeping track of healthcare costs in 1960.

Also thanks to the economic growth spurred by the [American] Recovery and Reinvestment Act, about our work to save the auto industry, which is now thriving but was on its heels at the time.

And the ingenuity of the private sector. We are close to 70 straight months of private‑sector job growth. We recognize that growth is the most important engine of meaningful deficit reduction. We need middle‑class economics for that growth to happen, not trickle‑down.

Now, we must act to create more jobs, grow wages, and responsibly lift the sequester that is strangling our national defense and our investments in America. Republicans need to set aside their calendar of chaos, instead join us in a timetable for progress.

We have important work to do with very short time fuses on them: advance a robust, long‑term transportation bill; that expires in October. Protect the full credit of the United States; must be done by November 5th. Pass a budget and keep government open; December 11th is the deadline for that. Reauthorize the Export‑Import Bank, which has already expired, that authorization. And reauthorize the 9/11 health and compensation bill for 9/11 workers.

Yesterday, Democrats stood in association with the concerns of millions of Americans whose Medicare Part B premiums and deductibles will skyrocket unless the Republicans join us in finding a solution. We have a solution. In fact, we have more than one solution that we could offer to them. And we can work together to create an answer. This has to be done by the middle of October, and here we are almost there.

So, once again, the chaos of the Republican Congress and their calendar is creating a crisis in the lives of the American people.

As you know, this week, we yet again had another moment of silence for those victims of gun violence. It's very sad. It's appropriate that we have moments of silence where we come together and pray, if we pray, as I do, or just have a moment of silence and remembrance.

But, every time this happens, we have a moment of silence, and then silence reigns. We do nothing else. We have become the Congress of silence, of inaction, when it comes to addressing the crisis of gun violence in our country.

On Friday, I wrote the Speaker asking for the creation of a select committee on gun violence. He has all these select committees; why can't we have one on an issue that is of real concern to the American people? We could confront the epidemic and report back in a short period of time. We can review some of the good work that is being done in some of our States, learn from those at the national level.

So we could take up Congressman Mike Thompson's legislation, the King‑Thompson bipartisan legislation to strengthen life-saving background checks and to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

Congressman Thompson is the chair on our task force, our Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, and he's introduced legislation to establish that select committee. So we should act. We should do something about it. We should make some progress instead of just having moments of silence, however respectful we all want to be.

Yesterday, yet again, Republicans voted to waste taxpayer dollars on, yet again, another of their politically motivated select committees. We call it the Select Committee to Attack Women's Health. With this committee, Republicans are trying to make it easier to shut down government and harder – harder – for millions of American women to access affordable family planning and life-saving preventive care they need.

Just in closing, of course our thoughts and prayers are with the people of South Carolina struggling with the flooding in their State. We send our prayers, but we also send our assurances that Congress is here to help them in the recovery of their communities.

Any questions?

Yes, ma'am.

***

Q: The Republicans are voting for Speaker today and I know you said you don't want to get involved in that, but it appears as if Kevin McCarthy will be the one who gets the majority of the votes. What's your relationship with Mr. McCarthy like?

Leader Pelosi. Well, they have a nominating process today and they have a ratification, if that's the word, of an election of the Speaker on the floor on October 29th and then we'll have a new Speaker and we can talk about it then. But we're Californians, we share that background. I wish whoever is the new Speaker well and extend a hand of cooperation to whoever that person may be.

Q: Leader Pelosi, you talk about their Calendar of Chaos but Democrats have not been immune to the infighting amongst themselves. And you had challenges from the Blue Dogs or whomever else during your time. Do you sympathize at all with the struggle of trying to keep a coalition built?

Leader Pelosi. No, not at all. I actually do not agree with your characterization. We are a democratic party. We're not a rubber stamp. And it is the nature of our party to have that dynamism, that vitality. And we build consensus. And when we build consensus, we go to the floor and we succeed. And we succeeded very well even working under the leadership of President George W. Bush. We passed the biggest energy in the history of our country practically to date in terms of reducing emissions – well, I refer you to it as the energy bill of 2007, signed by the President. We worked on HIV/AIDS and PEPFAR to make it the biggest plan to meet the President's wishes for PEPFAR but we said we want it big. We passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation to help poor children when we did our recovery package with President Bush. The list goes on and on. We didn't agree with everything. We didn't agree with the War in Iraq and Democrats voted to end that war. We didn't agree on privatizing Social Security and we stuck together completely in fighting [Bush] on that. But where we could find common ground we did.

And when President Obama was elected right from the start, right from the start we had – first bill he signed, Lilly Ledbetter, right following that S-CHIP – State Children's Health Insurance Program. The recovery package that I referenced that saved or created 3.5 to 4 million jobs of course I'm proudest of the Affordable Care Act. But right from the start, we went from trying to end discrimination in the workplace for women to the last bill – one of the last bills he signed was the repeal of ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' to end discrimination in the military. Dodd-Frank to address the concerns that we had about excesses in the financial community. We had a very successful agenda. We didn't have unanimity on every vote. So if you're saying we haven't had unanimity that isn't what we strove for. We were striving for a consensus. That's what we got, and we succeeded on the floor of the house. So we consider it a sign of success that we're like a kaleidoscope: sometimes people are all together on one issue who might not be there on the next issue, but they know that we're all a resource to each other and we don't do harm to each other.

So I'm very, very proud of the dynamic, of the Democrats, that we can accommodate the diversity that is in our Caucus but at the same time, get the job done for the American people. What you see on the other side is a Calendar of Chaos where it's: "I don't like this so we're shutting down government and if you don't agree, you're out as Speaker." I think that's a big contrast.

Yes, sir.

Q: Madam Leader, you mentioned guns and as you know, apart from mass shootings which are relatively rare, there are 33,000 Americans who die from gunshot wounds in this country every year, 88,000 injured. There is a provision tucked in the HHS appropriations that's been in there since 1997 that effectively bars the Center for Disease Control from studying gunshot wounds as a public health issue. You're entering into a negotiation with Speaker Boehner and the President and the leaders in the Senate over a budget deal, a spending deal, and I wonder if you are going to raise this issue, if you are going to insist in this budget deal – you have an opportunity here to repeal that narrow provision so that CDC can at least look at this issue. Are you going to do that?

Leader Pelosi. Well, the appropriators will take each of their subcommittees and come forward with what they come forward with. This issue goes back even further than just gun injuries. Labor HHS was one of the committees of Appropriations I served on. I was forged on that committee. It's the biggest domestic agenda committee in the Congress. And at that time, in my view probably naively on my part or innocently, I was saying – coming as a mom and not yet a grandmother, but a mom – "Why aren't we studying head injuries of children?" because it was a big thing – if they fall off a bicycle, if they fall down the steps. Why aren't we studying how we can prevent head injuries to children? It's a bigger issue than you might think statistically and, of course, therefore personally. I was getting all this resistance and I said: "Why are people opposed to studying head injuries in little children?" and they said: "Because some of those gun injuries could be caused by guns. And anytime you go anywhere near any research to document the need for some kind of a remedy that has anything to do with guns, it's off limits."

The Tiahrt Amendment I believe is what you're talking about…

Q: I mean [Congressman Jay] Dickey…

Leader Pelosi. Well, Dickey in the labor HHS. But then in other committees, it's raised its head as well. It's appalling. It's such a statement of ignorance: I don't know, I don't care and I don't want to know what this is. In other words, what we want to do is prevent gun violence, but if it happens, we really need to know so we can see if we're making progress. You have to know where you are to see how you can and if you are making progress. So, it's appalling. I don't know if it's possible. We are not in the majority – I don't know if it's possible to get the Dickey Legislation out of the bill, I'll be very honest with you. I thank you for raising it because the public should know that even something as one would think as benign as just knowing and doing the research on gun injury – that would be helpful to the American people that we reject that.

Q: Following up very briefly ma'am – I raised this question with the Speaker yesterday or the day before: He pointed out that you had the majority and the filibuster-proof majority at the beginning of President Obama's term when he was President, and you didn't repeal that provision. Why didn't you?

Leader Pelosi. Well, it's interesting that he would say that, but the fact is: we had a big agenda, we got a lot done. Let me just say, in terms of the veto-proof majority, the Senate…

Q: Not veto-proof, but filibuster-proof.

Leader Pelosi. The filibuster-proof, okay. We came in in 2009 with President Obama. It wasn't until the summer – so, take the first six months off – that we had Al Franken. Was it in July or June that he became certified? So, there was no sixty votes for the first part of the year. And then, so we're still at 59 – then we get Senator [Arlen] Specter – when was that? Was that July?

Q: Don't remember, but yeah.

Leader Pelosi. And then, Senator [Ted] Kennedy died. Rest his soul. Was that August? Or the end of July?

Q: August.

Leader Pelosi. And, some few months of Congress then. And then, in January, we had Senator [Sherrod] Brown elected. So, you could say that for several weeks in that two-year period, there were sixty votes in the Senate. And that's really – I mean, yes, we could have passed a bill at any time if it would be able to be passed in the Senate. So, just objectively looking at the calendar, you see there was very little time to get something like that done.

Q: Leader Pelosi, in regards to the Defense Authorization Bill and the controversy that's going on with the Guantanamo – most polls will say that Americans don't want to have Guantanamo prisoners locked up in maximum security prisons, here in the United States. That being said – how do you sort of deal with the conundrum here that President Obama wants to see it closed down, but then says that the military won't be funded if the Congress isn't going to shut it down through the Defense Authorization Bill. It kind of puts the military in a really dangerous spot.

Leader Pelosi. I don't think you gave the full picture, with all due respect. The President's main objection to the Defense Authorization Bill is that it is predicated on a number that depends on OCO and the sequestration number. If that were to precede as an authorization, it would totally undermine our ability to lift the caps, to end sequestration and to have the investments that we need in our national security at the Appropriations level and the Omnibus Bill and at the Domestic level – dollar for dollar. So, the main objection to the [Defense] Authorization Bill – one main reason Members have voted for it, against it or to sustain the President's veto – is because of the predicate on which it is built. Which is one that undermines everything else that we are doing here. We have voted to sustain the President's veto on all of the appropriations bills that have come to the Floor because they do not enable us to meet the need of the American people because they are predicated on a bad premise, as well. The Senate won't even take up those bills because of that same reason.

The Guantanamo [military prison] is an issue. It isn't actually, completely factually a case – the people in Illinois were looking forward to having some people transferred there. They saw it as economic opportunity, as you may recall. The problem with Guantanamo has been the resistance of the Republicans to enable that policy to go forward.

Q: A quick follow-up – as far as guns are concerned – the last gun shop over in San Francisco just closed down very recently. Your thoughts as far as how having the last legal gun shop in San Francisco, where law-abiding gun owners can actually go to can possibly stop violence over in San Francisco.

Leader Pelosi. It's a free market. I'm not familiar with the individual. I did see in the news that the shop is closing, and it is my understanding that they made a business decision that…

Q: It was regulations that shut them down.

Leader Pelosi. Well, the regulations didn't shut them down. They didn't want to live within the regulations. So, they decided to go elsewhere. So, that was a private sector decision on their part to do that – and I'm not even sure of all the regulations that they were concerned about have all but passed – but they had been suggested.

Q: Yesterday, a number of Democrats kind of criticized the Benghazi Committee as being political. Are you nearing the point where you're going to ask your members to stop participating in that panel? Is there a discussion about Democrats pulling out and not working with Trey Gowdy and any other Republicans to continue throughout the rest of Congress?

Leader Pelosi. Well, you hear some of our Members speak out very openly about their views on the subject. Some of them are on the Committee, some are not. I'm very proud of the Democrats on the Committee. Elijah Cummings has done a spectacular job in trying to keep the path to finding the truth where it is. The two Adams, I call them: Adam Schiff, our Ranking Member on Intelligence; Adam Smith, our Ranking Member on Armed Services. This is a very high-level group, as you know: Elijah Cummings, the Ranking Member on Government Reform Committee, as well as Linda Sánchez, a leader on the Ways and Means Committee, and Tammy Duckworth, a veteran, a woman veteran. They have been very strong, and very firm. They have their evaluations of whether it's even worth it to continue, and I seek their guidance as to when it would be appropriate to walk away from that.

As you know, it was a big debate before we even appointed people. Some people said, "It's a joke; don't go anywhere near it." Others said: "It is a joke, but they're going to have subpoena power, and they'll probably engage in abuse of power. And we see by McCarthy's own admission that it was abuse of power for a political purpose, and for that reason, Members thought they should be there to keep the path to finding the truth, rather than just catering to the "rata-tat-tat" whims of the Republicans on that Committee. So it will – again, I take my lead on that from the Members of the Committee.

Yes, sir?

Q: Just going back to defense authorization, for a second.

Leader Pelosi. Yes.

Q: There was a pretty large margin yesterday in the Senate on that, and that raises the question of whether a veto of it could be sustained. How confident are you at this point that you can keep your Members in line to sustain a veto?

Leader Pelosi. Very. Very. I don't know what question it raised there. The Senate even thinks that they may be able to sustain a veto. But be that as it may, we will sustain the veto in the House and strengthen the hands of the President in the negotiations that are really what's important – what comes next. I think many Republicans want to lift the caps, to rid our budget process of sequestration, so that we can make the proper investments in our national security, as well as in our domestic security. And we see the strength of our country defined by both – our military strength, and the health, education and well-being of the American people. The strength of our infrastructure – President Eisenhower did the Highway Act, Interstate Highway Act, as a defense issue in the late '50s. So we see all of that as part of the strength of America. And we look forward to having – right now, we're in the process of getting the pay-fors, which will establish the top line. We'll negotiate the riders – hopefully not much in terms of riders. And then the appropriators will go forward to do their work, and hopefully we can do it well before December 11, so there's no doubt about your Christmas or Hanukah or any other holidays.

Q: How long before you, as a principle – you guys have to sort of start meeting daily, or in person, between yourself, Mr. Boehner, Mr. McCarthy?

Leader Pelosi. Well, I think we have to have the three pieces – our offices are very involved in developing what the pay-fors are, therefore determining the top line. Our goal would be to have a top line that is about $76 billion added to – taking off the caps, adding $76 billion – $38 billion for domestic, $38 billion for defense. But we have to find the pay-fors. So find the pay-fors, establish the top line – the appropriators already have much of their work done. This would be the additionality, in how they make some changes there. But they're not starting from scratch. And then to make sure that we're not having whimsical riders that come down through the subcommittee process – but an agreement on what they are, up front.

So all of that is happening at the same time. And then, we go to the table. I don't think it should take very long. These are only decisions that have to be made, and we know what some of the choices are, and we look forward to getting it done in a very timely fashion. At the same time, as I mentioned, by the end of October we have to have a transportation bill. By the first week of November, honor the full faith and credit of the United States of America. By December 11 – to do the keep government open omnibus bill, hopefully sooner than that. And then some overdue, like Ex-Im Bank – job creator; transportation – job creator; keeping government open – job creator; honor the work of our 9/11 health workers by getting that legislation done, as well. So they are just a few, but they are the ones on a short fuse – have either expired, or will in a matter of weeks. And we can have that path to progress – our timetable for progress, a path to progress – or a calendar for chaos. We shall see. I'm optimistic. Thank you.

Q: Madam Speaker, following up on that, please.

Leader Pelosi. No, that was the last one. Thank you.

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