Who Runs Gov

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you all for coming. My apologies, but we had all these folks backed up and, you know, my members, they are — we move in a pack, and so I have to be with them on the floor. But I thank you for your availability as we start always when the President comes, whatever the party, for his view of the State of the Union, and it happens to be the one-year anniversary around that time of the President’s taking office. So we feel very proud of the past year, for my members and their courage.

We’ve passed — started with the recovery, and you see the Economist and Mark said we stopped the worst recession and progress is being made as the two go forward that without that bill we would have been in worse shape. Then the budget, with its priorities to reduce the deficit, to create jobs, to put us on a course of economic stabilization, the three pillars of investments in education for innovation, healthcare, core help and for jobs and new green jobs in our energy climate change initiatives.

All of this while giving a middle income tax cut, reducing the deficit, again creating jobs, growing the economy. And then again we went on then to pass all three, healthcare, energy, education, and then the regulatory reform, which is very important, and I am so pleased that the President is doing a callback to what we did in the TARP bill, which is to say the American people will be made whole on the TARP. If we don’t get the money returned by being paid back with interest, then there would have to be a fee on the financial institutions to cover it.

We had that, that was our initiative then, it’s his initiative now, and I think it’s really important, because there has to be some recognition that recklessness is not rewarded by bailouts. This whole, we’ve talked about this before, privatize the game, nationalize the risk, and at the same time have Wall Street recklessly squander the opportunity for credit and jobs et cetera on main street.

So I’m very proud of our first year, we want to get more of it signed into law. Much of it has been. Kennedy, volunteerism, you know, those kinds of things, expanding healthcare for children, very proud of the legislative record that we have signed into law, has been signed into law, but also now for the hard part of getting it in conference in the White House to be signed. So it’s great pride in my Members and their courage, and their courage in this great kaleidoscope that I have, some with one bill, some with another, some in committee, some on the floor.

I’m in my campaign mode now to make sure that we have a strong Democratic majority come November and I feel pretty good about that. We’re not yielding one grain of sand, so if anybody wants to know any numbers, I’m not yielding one grain of sand but we’re fighting for all of it. I feel pretty good about it because, you know, we’re ready, and that really makes the difference between winning elections or not sometimes, is are you ready. I’m delighted to see each one of you and have all of you at this table together, it’s pretty exciting for me, so why not hear what you want to know about?

Ron Brownstein. Well there is this one bill that is kind of hanging out there. [Laughter.]

Speaker Pelosi. We call it first among equals.

Ron Brownstein. Yeah, first among equals. It’s sort of consumed the last six, seven months.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

Ron Brownstein. Where are you in thinking about how to proceed?

Speaker Pelosi. Excuse me for one second. Is that door open for a reason?

Female Speaker. Not now.

Speaker Pelosi. I don’t think this place is haunted or anything, but just, why is it open? The –right now, the need — while the vote in the Senate may have been diminished by one in Massachusetts, the need for us to proceed with healthcare reform has not diminished one bit. The present system is totally financially unsustainable. It’s not sustainable for individuals and their own personal health insurance and healthcare, for small businesses in particular, well big business, big business has been footing the bill, they have this anvil around their neck that is anticompetitive in terms of competing in the world market.

So for individuals, for businesses large and small, for our Federal budget, we can’t handle this, the upward spiral rising medical costs is debilitating in terms of what it does to the debt and then of course to the economy in general in terms of the dynamism of people having portability to follow their dreams to be a writer or start a small business or whatever without being confined by whether they have healthcare as a child as a preexisting condition.

So people are still going bankrupt because they get sick, insurance companies are still rescinding policies if people need too expensive operations, they’re still canceling policies because somebody gets sick even though they paid on time to their premiums, and again, that list goes on about caps in coverage for people, that must change, and those reforms are an important part of what we’re doing.

So all of that need is still there, so we have to get it done. And the way I see it at the moment, and all this changes, is if there is a willingness for us to pursue with the constitutional majority rule, then I think we’ll be able to come up with something that sufficiently addresses the concerns of House Members of the policy in the Senate bill. All of this was agreed to, say a week and a half ago, and we’re pretty confident about going on a positive course there, because the changes were I think very important and we could make a case for them.

In the absence of the 60 vote, we think that if you go to reconciliation you trim down as to what you can do, but you can do enough to cleanup that to — don’t be sad, but to make a bill that our Members can support. But there is at this time for this bill — but let me take at it this time, there is for this bill in its present form very little support in the House.

John Harwood. Can you give us –

Speaker Pelosi. And now, let me just say this if I may, John. Then on a separate track, we would want to do some of the things that you can’t do under reconciliation but that you can do freestanding, and then there’s another category of things that Members would like to do that are more challenging from a parliamentary standpoint as to what we can do, so we have to narrow the difference and weed those out. But if in fact we can get a majority rule, the changes, then I think that we can proceed, and we’ll find that out soon. But even so, we’ll proceed for now.

John Harwood. So it sounds like you’re confident that if you in fact can reach agreement on the reconciliation path to make some of the changes that you were going to make anyway –

Speaker Pelosi. Majority rule, we call it.

John Harwood. Yes.

Speaker Pelosi. Majority vote.

John Harwood. That you can get to 18 in the House for the Senate bill, under that description?

Speaker Pelosi. Well it’s not the Senate bill, it would be with a reconciliation that changes certain things from the Senate.

John Harwood. Got it. What I’m wondering is, do you have an assessment at this point of how many points you would lose for example on the abortion language in the House?

Speaker Pelosi. This isn’t about that.

John Harwood. And how many votes you could gain from blue dogs because there’s no public option and it’s a less expensive bill?

Speaker Pelosi. We’re to the pillars, we’re to the pillars. What is the nature of the exchange? What about this excise tax that has no marking in a caucus? What are we doing for affordability for the middle class? That is the essential. In other words, if everything were great in our country in terms of, you know, the budget deficit wasn’t growing and people generally like what they have, the upwards cost for the middle class are unsustainable, and they’re at the mercy of and we’re at the mercy of. So we don’t want them at the mercy of. And so we have to have strong
– As I said, my concern is affordability for the middle class, accountability for the insurance companies, and they go together, they go together. So we want to see more in that regard. We have to. And again, the excise tax has no support, very little support — I’m not saying none, there may be, about 20 people. [Laughter.]

John Harwood. We have a deal on the excise tax, right? The deal would be –

Speaker Pelosi. I don’t want to be precise. Well, I don’t ever use the word “deal,” there was an agreement that we reached over here, our Members still don’t like the excise tax, they don’t like half of it, they don’t like any of it. But nonetheless great progress was made, yeah, great progress was made on that. One, two, three.

Al Hunt. Madam Speaker, I know you said earlier that the amount of votes to pass the Senate bill — The White House has been saying, after a while it becomes apparent that if that’s the choice that you can’t do it after reconciliation and their preference would be hopefully House Members would decide, okay I don’t like it but I can clean it up and hopefully we can have a reconciliation. Are you saying –

Speaker Pelosi. Well reconciliation, with reconciliation it’s a whole different problem.

Al Hunt. I know, but are you saying now there is no way, now or next week or three weeks from now, that you will ever pass the Senate bill through this?

Speaker Pelosi. I don’t see, at this time I do not see any way that the freestanding as not improved by reconciliation will pass.

Al Hunt. Okay, but let me just backup. But if you did a dual track, you had a reconciliation bill that took care of some of these other issues like –, but you then at the same time pass the Senate bill through the House?

Speaker Pelosi. After the reconciliation matter was settled, then we could. But it makes a big difference. You know, the reconciliation, while we are confined because it’s a discipline — you know what the purpose of the reconciliation was, was to exert a discipline on revenue, spending, all of it, so that the budget, the deficit would be reduced. So it’s a good discipline to go to. You’re not allowed to do much policy there, practically none. So some of that has to be done elsewhere.

And so Members are not going to say, I’m thrilled to death because everything has been addressed. No, that would have been okay a week and a half ago, because we had good success — and our compromises, it wasn’t a win-win for us, it was compromise but was very doable. So what I’m saying to you is, Senate bill standalone, I don’t see any chance for it. Reconciliation, resolving some of the issues, then we can pass this thing. There’s a path, there is a path –

E.J. Dionne. What I understand to be the case is that, you are now at the point in the House where with this dual track strategy you may actually be close to assembling majority, it’s only if the Senate passes the reconciliation bill, sends it to you so you can trust that it’s there –

Speaker Pelosi. No, whatever the order is, but the whole thing has to be finished, with the reconciliation House and the Senate, before we take up the Senate bill.

E.J. Dionne. Senate bill, but my understanding is that at the moment the Senate is, at this point you may have more in line to do this than the Senate does –

Speaker Pelosi. Well we don’t know, we don’t know.

E.J. Dionne. And the signals from the Senate are not clear to you.

Speaker Pelosi. Well they don’t know, but let me talk about that point, because you hear people say, well I don’t like doing majority vote. Well if they’re not going to do majority vote on this, you know, I don’t know how much is going to be accomplished in the Senate, because if reconciliation rules which are established for this purpose — now, recall that many people, Democrats and Republicans all supported — not all of them, but both — supported President Bush five times on his reconciliation bills, President Clinton passed welfare reform, President Reagan COBRA and his tax cuts, President Bush his tax cuts.

So some good, some not so good, but nonetheless, for the Republicans to be saying, oh my gosh, this is extraordinary and exotic. No, no, no, it’s the regular order for when you’re doing a budget bill or something that has those ramifications. And so I think it’s really important for each of you to be a messenger to the public to say this is the regular order. 60 votes for a Mother’s Day resolution and everything else in between is not the regular order, that’s an obstruction.

So this is the kind of event, legislative event, that the reconciliation was established for. Now it has its constraints, the Byrd rule in the Senate, we could do more reconciliation than they could, but we can’t because it has to pass the Senate and then — so you have the discipline of it plus the Byrd rule on top of it, so it narrows the number of things you can do. Doesn’t mean some senators aren’t calling me and saying, put the public option in the reconciliation. You know, you can’t do that, you couldn’t pass it in the Senate, that’s not one of the things that falls into that category.

John Harwood. Does it matter who passes the reconciliation bill first?

Speaker Pelosi. Makes my life easier if they could pass it first, but because if they have to begin in the House. Either way I don’t want that to be an obstacle, but all of it has to come first before we pass the Senate bill.

Karen Tumulty. Madam Speaker, yesterday Harry Reid said something along the lines of, you know, what’s the hurry here?

Speaker Pelosi. I agree.

Karen Tumulty. Is that right? So you don’t think that there is some kind of imperative that if you kind of leave this hanging out there too long that it’s going to get harder to do as more time goes by?

Speaker Pelosi. Well I think we have to find out if there is going to be majority vote in the Senate, and that shouldn’t take too long to find out. And there must be something that you can get a majority vote on. But anyway, that’s up to Harry, I’m over here. So we’ll find out what that possibility is and then we’ll see where we go from there, but this is all very doable. But I’m telling you there’s certain things that relate to, you know, the Nelson, that has to be fixed.

So tell me that somebody’s going to not vote to fix that, the equity for the states — it’s about affordability for the middle class, equity for the states in terms of correcting that with something positive, it’s about addressing that excise tax issue, which is just not at the market over here, and dealing with a couple of other things, as the parliamentarians will allow us to do, we will have a commission, we’d like our wording better because it’s not such a user — what’s the word I’m looking for?

Mark Shields. Usurping.

Speaker Pelosi. I like that word, I like that word.

Eugene Robinson. Usurpation?

Mark Shields. It looks better in print than when you say it.

David Corn. It’s a messy word to say.

Speaker Pelosi. And I use it all the time, but it’s not coming to me now. We don’t want to usurp all of the prerogatives of Congress, but the fact is that the President believes it’s –, and so we can find a way. You can always find a way, you can always find a way. And that’s, you know, as I’ve said to my colleagues, go in the door, the door’s locked, go to the gate, the gate’s locked, climb over the fence, it’s too high, pole vault in, that doesn’t work, parachute in, we have to get this done for the American people one way or another. And again, as this is happening there are some things that are not, shall we say, subject to what we can put in this reconciliation which would be things we would bring up.

Eugene Robinson. So you would need the reconciliation bill and the Senate bill and then additional legislation?

Speaker Pelosi. Well we may want to have additional legislation, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens there, what they can get. But you know what, again, this is the Senate’s business. We’ve made our position clear.

David Corn. As you proceed in this path, what are you looking for in terms of the White House and leadership and trying to make this any easier possibly?

Speaker Pelosi. Easy is just, it’s not a word here, everything is a heavy lift here. And we’re talking about something so substantial where the special interests are so dug in — I mean what did I read to you? Regulatory reform on the banks, energy with the energy industry, healthcare with the health insurance et al. industry, these are all big changes of the status quo where people get paid tons of money to maintain the status quo and the public be damned. And what the President says, we’ll measure our success by the promises made by America’s working families. This is essential to them, so we have to find a way.

The President I think demonstrated his mastery of the detail and what was necessary for this bill to pass in a good way, honoring his values and vision for what it was, his principles on how it should be paid, while we had some disagreement on that. He said, our pay for honored his principles, but he preferred the excise tax. It just has no market in the public. Our Members are philosophically opposed to it and they get no comfort at home, 70 percent of the American people. You’re talking about a surcharge on people for their 101 millionth dollar, that they are free and clear for a million dollars for a couple, that’s too hard to take, but let’s tax the benefits of people in the middle range, it just has no market.

Ron Brownstein. So is the compromise they reached with the AFLCIO then what you seek — are you seeking, if you do go through this process, to further change that, or is that basically, you know, that revision where you could end up?

Speaker Pelosi. Let’s say there are those who would like to go further than that. But that’s a good start, and it’s a good place, and it addresses the middle class concerns. Because actually labor did the middle class a favor by its advocacy because many middle income people are affected by this, they have nothing to do with collective bargaining.

John Harwood. But the things you believe must be fixed in the Senate bill –

Speaker Pelosi. Did I start making a list?

John Harwood. Cadillac tax, which you’ve got an agreement on, so –

Speaker Pelosi. There’s something there, but that’s still not in the Senate bill though, you understand.

John Harwood. Yes, I understand. Exchanges, the shape of the exchanges, affordability, and Nelson. Anything else must be changed?

Speaker Pelosi. Probably, probably. You have too many things there. Were you writing while I was speaking? The nerve of you. [Laughter.]

Al Hunt. He forgot abortion.

Speaker Pelosi. I thought is was just between us. No, yeah I guess I said, around here my keyword for Members is sequencing, let’s see what we can get done about the big issues, and then we can figure out, is this worth having healthcare reform or is it not, you know? But we can’t start with, you know, this little bit, we have start with the fundamentals.

John Harwood. But you downplayed the abortion — as an obstacle.

Speaker Pelosi. I’d say that’s not the subject of our conversations at this time. Right now we’re talking about affordability for the middle class, fairness for the states and how they help the people have access to healthcare, and you know, those kinds of issues, how this is paid for. If we can’t — you know, in other words if we hear back from the Senate that they can’t get 51 votes there’s no use having all these other discussions.

But the sequencing is, what can they do, is that something that works for us? They know what we need, okay. Then at the same time some things that can’t be done in reconciliation are not in the bill, but that they have, in the good old days of the 60 votes, agreed to. So we’ll not be sending them something that they say, why are you sending us this, you’re just putting us on the spot, but they think that they could get 60 votes for.

Karen Tumulty. Well, Lieper — this AFLCIF deal, I mean labor and the White House negotiated themselves a five-year exemption from this tax while 80 percent of the people who would be affected by the Cadillac tax would have to start paying it right away. How is that idea going over at home?

Speaker Pelosi. Well you know, the easiest thing is just to get rid of the whole excise tax. It’s just, it’s like getting a job, it solves so many problems. So without getting involved in the details of this or that, we’re just saying this is hard. Now it may be hard for the Senate too, and that’s where we’ll have to say, what would this language — because you know, none of it exists in either bill right now. That was the White House and labor, it doesn’t exist in either bill. So what shape does it take if it were to go into a bill?

David Corn. Back to the President just one more time –

Speaker Pelosi. Did that answer your question?

David Corn. No you didn’t. But you said everything’s a heavy lift.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

David Corn. Is there anything that he could do or that he could say tonight that would make it a little less heavy?

Speaker Pelosi. Oh, we like heavy lifts, this is what we thrive on around here.

Eugene Robinson. Can he stop you?

Speaker Pelosi. But I think, you know, –

David Corn. How much are you bench pressing these days?

Speaker Pelosi. I think it’s really important for everybody to know that the problem is not going away, that tens of millions of people in our country don’t have access to healthcare, and it isn’t up to the middle class to pay for them to get it, you know what I’m saying? So we have waste, fraud, and abuse. $500 billion out of the Medicare having no impact on benefits and the rest, but out of what we think are legitimate savings there.

That, the President wanted to establish a commission to do, we did it in advance of that commission, we knew where to go to find that. So that part is there. But people who have health insurance have concerns about the reforms that are needed in the insurance industry, preexisting, recision, lose your policy if you get sick, you know the list. Bigger than that, go bankrupt if you get a diagnosis.

You know, it just, devastate your family economically because you got sick. It shouldn’t be right, that isn’t right. So I would like to see some recognition, which the President says more beautifully than anybody, he cares about this enormously, it’s a priority and a value, first among equals, that we need to get this done. Process, I don’t care about, but we need to get this done one way or another.

I think that that would be something the President will say and that he will stay engaged until it is done. I don’t think we’ll hear any particulars about, you know, process. Because the American people don’t care about process, we talk about it here. And they’re not even particularly interested, shall we say, in the wonky policy, they want to know what this means to them, and this means a great deal to them if we can get this bill passed.

Mark Shields. Madam Speaker, the Wall Street Journal, NBC polls has asked all the way through this year, do you think the President’s healthcare plan is a good idea, bad idea. It’s gone from a 33/26 positive in April to a 31 positive 46 negative today. This is with the Democrats controlling the White House, Congress, and a Republican party without a face and without a voice. What happened to the debate? How did the Democrats lose control of this?

Speaker Pelosi. Well I think that, with something like this, the only answer is to have a bill that you can talk about. You can talk, well we have this and the Senate has that and they’re going to go to this and we’re going to go to that. My view is, that would have all been different if this bill had been passed a few months ago, because then they’d be seeing, this is what it means to you if your child has a preexisting condition. This means to you as a small business. 20,000 small businesses will be able to be in the exchange.

It’s a completely different dynamic for people. And when you have a bill you can tell about it, tell John, you can bake the pie or you can sell the pie, it’s hard to do both at the same time. But now that we are about to get to the stage of having a pie, we have to get out there and say, do you know the remarkable things that are in this legislation for families, for small businesses, for big businesses, for people with disabilities? Had the Best Buddies and the Special Olympics in here this morning, some of those people don’t even get any access to healthcare unless they go to like a Special Olympics clinic in preparation for a race or an event.

So if you’re a young person, there are advantages to you. If you’re a senior, you close the doughnut hole and stabilize Medicare. If you’re a small business, you will be spending trillions of dollars more into the future except under this bill, those costs will be drastically contained, drastically contained. If you care about the deficit for our country, this is — if there are no other reason to do healthcare reform than to stop the growth in our Federal deficit, that would be reason sufficient to do it, and we’re going to have to do something about that anyway.

So it is — healthcare, you know, Tip O’Neill said “all politics is local.” When it comes to healthcare, it’s all personal, it’s more immediate than local. And people know that they have had a rescission on the gurney going to the operating room, that their family has gone bankrupt because somebody got sick, that they can’t get healthcare because a child is bipolar or has diabetes or asthma or families have to drop their wife from the policy because of whatever.

So it’s about money, in terms of what it means to the debt and the competitiveness of businesses and economic survival of families, it’s about jobs — this bill will create 4 million jobs in its life, 4 million jobs — and it’s about, again, what it means to our national debt. So when people know about it, I have every confidence. But right now, what do they know? What is the debate? The public option, who even knows what it means? Had you ever even heard of it before the March of last year? I never heard of it.

Mark Shields. No.

Speaker Pelosi. Public option, then it became abortion, it’s all about abortion. Well wait a minute, let’s talk about what this means to you in your personal situation and your professional situation, and that’s what we have to tell people. And the bill, it’s remarkable. Our bill is near perfect. [Laughter.]

It’s very complicated though, and so you have to boil it down to, how do you get this done? And so, yeah, I understand, I noticed the 30, 31, 33 remained constant, the negative side went up. And when you have the other side saying, it’s going to destroy Medicare. If this doesn’t happen — Medicare has really significant problems. And it’s death panels and it’s, you know, just think of, going to give you pimples on your face, you know, it’s going to do every horrible thing that you could possibly imagine. And there’s a market for that in the absence –

Eugene Robinson. Of the bill.

Speaker Pelosi. Of a bill, of a bill. So you have to do that. Now I and the absence, absence of a bill in the near, near, you know, if we don’t have one tomorrow or the next day — I don’t mean it that way — well in the next week or two, we will have other pieces out there that say to the insurance industry, you will be held accountable, and to — well you’ll see.

Ron Brownstein. Can I ask you a slightly broader question than healthcare, is that okay?

Speaker Pelosi. It’s up to the group, because –

Eleanor Clift. Speaking of heavy lifts, the President suggested to freeze a portion of defense spending. How is that going to fly? Is there a market for it?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, Eleanor, let me say this, recognizing the excellent values and good judgment of the President, I don’t mind him having that discretion, whereas I might have been reluctant with others. But I will say this, I don’t think you can take some portion of the defense spending off the table. We certainly want to honor our veterans, our men and women in uniform, for their service, they must have what they need when they go into battle and the rest of that.

But defense contractors? I mean I want to support our national defense, but I’m not here to support defense contractors. And I think that every dollar spent in that way, if we’re going to subject every dollar to harsh scrutiny, as we should, then they should be included in it. So I don’t have a problem with — we have to take extraordinary measures. This deficit is just practically, it’s like a kick in the stomach, every time you read it you think, how could this be?

Well it could be because George Bush was President of the United States, took us to a track the biggest swing in debt in history from being on a track of $5.4 trillion of surplus, on that path, to trillions in deficit, and that’s where we are, and the deficit and the interest on the debt is debilitating. So here we are, and one way to deal with it is to have an economy that grows and consumers who are confident and the rest, and we’re trying to do that.

But the other part of it is, you look at, just like in your home. What am I spending on? We almost have to get into a survival mode. Subject this spending to the harshest scrutiny. But if you’re going to subject Title I for children in disadvantaged areas to that kind of scrutiny, you’re going to subject the defense contractors to that kind of scrutiny, and that’s just the way it is.

So you do that, you create this commission that comes up with its ideas, and then also we are hoping that today or tomorrow, I think it’s tomorrow, the Senate will pass pay-as-you-go. Again, this has been a progressive idea. George Miller brought this to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in 1982, and won, it won, it became part of the five, that resolution won. So we’ve been pounding on this thing for decades.

Now the blue dogs had it as their mantra and it became their caucus’s mantra, pay as you go. What is it you don’t get about that? So but we made it the rule of the House when I became Speaker, but we want to make it the law of the land. So that’s what we’re hoping that will pass. Commission to examine all the possibilities, subject everything to some pretty tough scrutiny, and the pay as you go. But these tough measures are necessary because this debt is debilitating, it must stop.

You know I’m about the kids, and now children and grandchildren, and we cannot narrow their options by having this debt be so — and the interest on the debt, why don’t we just take our money and put it right down in a rat hole and burn it or something, because that’s all you’re getting for interest on the debt, nothing, nothing. So anyway, I think when we do make it really clear to the public, I think — and Massachusetts, you know, Mark knows my background very well in terms of being a state party chair, I’m can you cold blooded in analyzing election results, after-action review, as we say in the military.

You do too know, EJ. You’ve got to wait until it settles and then you see. There are many reasons why campaigns go a certain way. You can ignore certain aspects, but there is an unrest about spending. I don’t think the excise tax was particularly popular in Massachusetts. But that may not — I say wait until the dust settles, and then I offer suggestions.

But anyway, there are many aspects to the success of an election. Without going into anything more. But I do think there was a clear message about fiscal responsibility, and it’s like we’re the ones who are fiscally responsible. George Bush drove us into the ground. What is it that we are not conveying about our message?

So this year you will see a lot more of selling pie not only but also of this message on fiscal responsibility.

Picture this. The Senate wanted to pass a statutory commission, so we said we can get pay as you go to support the statutory commission, but we need to have pay as you go if this is going to be real. Then they said if it doesn’t pass, because there was some opposition. If it doesn’t pass then the President will appoint such a commission so that we know that such a commission will exist. The Republicans, House and Senate leadership, said if it isn’t statutory, we’re not appointing people to it. And then lobbied against passage of a statutory.

We want statutory, not an executive order, and then lobbied against the passage.

Again, the world needs to know about who’s serious about this or not. These tax cuts, the Bush tax cuts are the biggest piece. I don’t have any charts here for you, but I certainly stare at them every morning as a reminder of what we have to do to cut that deficit, and also, I mean Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan for eight years blamed everything on Jimmy Carter, real or imagined. People are forgetting where this mess came from. We are sweeping up behind a great big elephant. And then we can build. That’s what we’ve laid the foundation to do that.

I’m pretty comfortable about what is in the mix and how we present it as we go forward. In the House, we’re going to have to take responsibility for our own message in our discreet districts without depending on, well I thought something else was going to happen. So our Members will be very well equipped to talk about what they voted for and why and why it was important to the country.

Ron Brownstein. Jobs? Obviously in the polling, that poll, every other poll we talked about health care for 40 minutes, but the public, part of the problem is they feel that Washington’s been talking about health care for eight months and they’re worried about jobs and –

Speaker Pelosi. That’s what I say, it’s a four letter word that solves every problem.

Ron Brownstein. What do you want to hear from the President? What do you expect from the Senate? Do you feel the package you’ve passed is basically your last word on this subject? What do you have to do between now and November to get the country in a better position –

Speaker Pelosi. I don’t know what the Senate — They’re putting together their package. I think they have a couple of versions that they’re considering. But you’ll have to ask them about that.

I grew up in politics, as you know, then we didn’t talk about the environment or a woman’s right to choose or any of these things. It was only about jobs. It was about the economy. Jobs for working people. That’s who I am as a Democrat. What are we doing to create jobs for working people in our country? So everything that we do has to be how does this legislation create jobs? How does this legislation create jobs? When I became Whip I said don’t bring me any suggestions unless it reduces the deficit and creates jobs. When you can subject your suggestion to that test, then bring it in because otherwise I’m going to send you out and say answer these questions.

So some of the things we had to do in this latest jobs package might not have been necessary if some of these other bills had been passed. If we don’t understand that the jobs of the future are the green, fuel efficient jobs, I don’t know how we’re going to continue to be number one in competitiveness worldwide. This isn’t just about oh, this is a good idea to save the planet. Yeah. That’s not the issue. The issue is it’s job creating and it’s about our national security. Economic security.

The fact that the planet is melting away is of not a lot of interest to a lot of people, but their job is, and the fact that we’re spending almost, what is it a billion dollars a day for oil that we’re sending out of the country? At least one billion dollars a day.

So these are job creating things. Now they’re not fully passed yet, so we put in a bill that was modest in terms of it had to be paid for and it had to be focused on what really would create jobs right away, and you know what our bill is. Hopefully the Senate will have something, and you know what? We’ll go to conference and we’ll talk about those job priorities at that time. I don’t know, I think one bill looks sort of — I don’t know. We’ll see what their bills look like.

But we believe that the unfolding, the unleashing of more of the recovery money. Like in California I think 45 percent of it, around 50 percent is being released. Another 50 percent to come. I assume it’s the same for the rest of the country. I just have a closer finger on the pulse of California this week.

So we know that more will come from that and we need another boost. It doesn’t mean a giant stimulus package. This is under $100 million. But I think it’s necessary for us to do.

Everything else we do, whatever the issue is that we take up, whether it’s about energy or whatever it is, it’s got to be job producing. It’s not so you do a jobs bill and then you do something –

Here’s what I wish could be conveyed to the public more clearly. People say why are you doing health care when people care about jobs? It’s about jobs. It’s about jobs. What are you doing energy wise? It’s about jobs. What are you doing in education and innovation? It’s about jobs. We’re all about jobs. The recovery package was about jobs. The budget was about jobs. They were all about jobs. And not only how we create them now in the near/near, but how we stabilize the economy with long term investments and innovation that keep us number one. Because we will –

I have great confidence in the ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit and the energy of the American people. But the public policy has to be a partner in that. And so I think we’ll do our competitiveness, we’ll reauthorize our competitiveness bill.

The big difference is we passed that when President Bush was President. It was part of my innovation agenda that I started when I became leader, had started years ago but we put it forth then. It passed when President Bush was President but we couldn’t get anything funded. Whether it was investments in science, in technology, energy grants and the rest of that. Then we were able to get it funded.

So people are thinking in a very creative way about the future, about the future. And some of that has short-term, near/near job creation, and some of it is to make sure we don’t get into this position again.

But the whole agenda was always about jobs.

Doyle McManus. Let me follow on the same subject.

How did that message get muddied last year, and how do you do it better this year? Your office has sent every American, every American around the table lots and lots of persuasive stuff –

Speaker Pelosi. So have you not written about it? [Laughter.]

Doyle McManus. It’s a big deal.

Unknown Speaker. We twittered it. [Laughter.]

Speaker Pelosi. Of course I think that will be part of the Presidents’ message tonight. What’s the jobs report?

Doyle McManus. But he only comes with this speech once a year.

Speaker Pelosi. It’s a big deal because it sets the tone, our Members will be able to –

There’s nothing — Do I need to tell you this? No. There’s nothing like the weight of a President’s words. The President makes this speech, it’s all the way up here. And then we can be a drumbeat for it. We can say it over and over again, and then somebody else you’re going to die if you pass through this health care bill and that’s what’s in the news. But the President sets that tone and then we be the voice.

I just may give you this example because it was driven home to me so clearly.

We had been working so hard on school lunch programs for kids. This is now when President Clinton was President. It was a really important thing to us. We were visiting these schools, these poor kids, it was just a shame. So we had special orders and morning business and press conferences all over and we thought we are going to change this for these children. Fluttered here, fluttered.

President Clinton said it’s really important for us to focus on school lunches. He made it in one of his speeches. He talked about school lunches. Everything changed.

Now our Members think they changed it by having these press conferences and all the rest. [Laughter.] I said to them, I’m part of this. Don’t think that this would have happened without those words coming out of his mouth.

Now we may have persuaded him that this was important, I don’t know. But it was day and night.

So when the President speaks and clarifies for the public’s mind –

Very intelligent people haven’t the faintest idea about certain of the issues that we’re talking about here. You fall for the line. Reconciliation, that’s not according to Hoyle, the markets of Coinesbury or anybody else you want to drum up. Well no, it is. But because they say it and that’s first out of the box, because to be negative is easy, I know that. It’s how we won the House. [Laughter.]

Well, we had to tell it the way it was. I mean we were faithful to the truth. It is true. They have no fidelity to that, they’ll say anything. But in any event, you come at a time where we have a source of pride for what we did. This was the agenda, we got it done, we sent it to the Senate, we’re now dealing with the health bill, we’ll deal with the others as they pass there. In the mean time, a lot of good legislation was passed in terms of tobacco, we’re eager to see what will happen on the Senate side with the rate reform and things that will really make a change whether it’s in the personal health of people or in the economic health of our country.

Eugene Robinson. Is it up to the President then to take control of the message –

Speaker Pelosi. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Take control of the message? He is the message?

Eugene Robinson. But then to reverse the pattern in which his opponents have been able on many days and many weeks and probably many months at this point to define the issues in a way, like that. We’re all going to die if you pass this bill.

Speaker Pelosi. Let’s go to the positive side. The entire year has been about jobs. The recovery package, the budget, the investments in education and health care and energy, they’re all about jobs. See, because people think you’re doing this instead of jobs, as we said earlier. No, we’re doing this to create jobs. I think that that message has to come back more clearly.

Now I think the President has made it very clear, but tonight is the night where people will see this speech. It’s not like he’s in Ohio making a speech. He’s giving the State of the Union. I think that it behooves the rest of us, as I say, I won my majority one district at a time, so our Members are going into their districts and talking about these things. It would be great if there was a national description of it. We’re not depending on that, but this is what the President believes. It’s his agenda, and I’m sure that he will frame it that way.

I’m not saying that he hasn’t done enough to do that, I’m saying it’s never enough. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

E.J. Dionne. Can I ask you the question again? In a different way, but it’s the same question. If you take the two big issues this year, one is health care and the other is stimulus. It does seem that they won the battle over messaging. If you were doing polling, the health care bill polls badly and the stimulus bill polls badly. Why did that happen?

Speaker Pelosi. I think the stimulus — On stimulus, its proximity to the TARP bill really muddied it because there are people who don’t have the faintest idea that they’re two different things. That’s a big thing for us. Because many of our Members weren’t even here when we passed that bill. Mind you, President Bush’s problem, President Bush’s solution, the Republicans headed for the hills and we had to carry that thing across, and it was important to do, and we believed that if a financial crisis was avoided, a greater financial crisis was avoided for doing that. The public hated it. Hated it. And its implementation, right then and there when it started, was not something to be excited about. President Bush used the funds right away and then, you know, AIG and where did that money come from? The whole thing was bad. You know it better than any of us because that’s your beat.

Right?

Al Hunt. It is? [Laughter.]

Speaker Pelosi. Well, the beat of your associates. So that was like the worst gum stuck to your shoe. Now I’m cleaning up my language. [Laughter.]

That was the worst gum stuck to your shoe when you go in for a recovery package. One’s in what, October, and the other’s in January. Add to that, the auto bailout. And people are like wait a minute, I don’t have a job, I can’t get a loan from the bank, and all the rest, you’re bailing out the auto industry and the banks? What’s wrong with this picture. Right, John? What is wrong with this picture?

So boom, all of it was unpopular. Because it got mixed up. The recovery package got mixed up in the public perception about all that other stuff.

And on top of it, then we all get aggravated by bonuses, blah, blah, blah, and before they see the full benefit of the recovery they’re seeing the banks recovered, they’re getting bonuses, what about me? I think that is really part of it. It didn’t have a clear shot.

That’s what we have to do now with what we’re doing. A clear shot. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have done it. We had to do it. But what we do now, we can’t just say we have to have a clear shot on what we do on health care as we go forward and the rest to present it in a way that relates to people’s lives.

So I think that, from what I see as I go around, is –

And Wall Street has been completely reckless. You know? Did you see that movie when they said, “Greed is good.”? Well these guys make greed look good. Compared to recklessness, total recklessness. At least there’s a path on the other — This is just squandering. Squandering. I think they’re going to make a follow-up to it. I’ll be interested in seeing it.

David Corn. It comes out in April.

Speaker Pelosi. In April? Is that what it is.

But greed can almost be a virtue compared to what they did. It was criminal. And the public knows that. There’s something very wrong here with our financial system when they can take us to the brink and practically laugh it off.

So that was part of the problem, too.

The President really got a bad hand dealt him in terms of what was left. The economy, the financial institutions, the deficit, didn’t believe that climate change was occurring. All the specific issues, nothing was happening. Afghanistan. No plan for seven and a half years in Afghanistan. No plan whatsoever. Now you have to try to make it work.

When you talk about him, I admire his strength, and that strength includes a calmness that is really essential because we get very excited, some of us we do, about our issues. I always say to the Members, as I’ve said to you before, passionate abut the issues, dispassionate about the solutions on how we’re going to get this done. This President has a calmness and a cool, he has a vision as we all know about a better future, knowledge and judgment, his brilliant mind enables him to get it really fast.

David Corn. So do you think there’s a need for anything that would resemble a course correction in terms of the way the administration’s approaching –

Speaker Pelosi. In terms of what they’re doing or in how it’s being presented?

David Corn. Take your pick. They go hand in hand.

Speaker Pelosi. I prefer the second, because what he is doing is very necessary for our country to be number one, to be competitive, to be innovative, to honor, as President Kennedy said, honor the values of our founders. It must be first.

Eugene Robinson. In how it’s being presented then?

Speaker Pelosi. As I always say around here, it’s like a marriage. You may think you’re communicating, but if your wife doesn’t think you are, you aren’t. [Laughter.]

Speaker Pelosi. Because around here people say well I’ve made that presentation. You know what? If they didn’t hear it, you didn’t do it. You have to go back.

So I’m not saying this in any way to criticize or to change what the President does. He has a plan. I always like a plan. And I respect a plan. So I don’t think it’s important or necessary or wise for the rest of us to say well, how come the public doesn’t get it? Sequence. Give me the job now.

John Harwood. Speaking of that, you’re on the five yard line on health care, so that’s one thing. But what is your realistic assessment of the prospects of the Senate acting on a carbon cap such as you passed in Waxman/Markey, in this environment?

Speaker Pelosi. We’ll see. We’ll see. We have to get past one thing. We do a lot of things. I think that judgments have to be made about policies, again specific — Take them in their discreet place and then see how they relate to the bigger picture. We have to do something to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It’s a national security issues, and it is a jobs issue.

John Harwood. Would you agree that that particular element of the agenda, that is a cap, cap in trade system, is pretty unlikely in this environment? To become law this year?

Speaker Pelosi. I can’t really say because we passed ours. It’s up to whatever the Senate is going to do and then we vote at conference. But we’ll see.

But I would not rule it out.

Staff. We need to wrap it up.

John Harwood. This is a good time for summary then.

To what extent have you — you have reached conclusions in your own mind about how your members should frame the choice in this election. What is the argument you want to take to the country about what Democrats have done and what the contrast is with Republicans? Do you feel you have a vision of what that should be? And if so, what is it?

Speaker Pelosi. I’ll tell you what my Members think. Some of them think never forget, I always way to them that Xerxes, when he lost the battle to the Athenians, he was so humiliated, but he understood that, what Lincoln called the harsh artillery of the time, that he might forget how angry he was then. So he had his slaves, when they were fanning him, every 20 minutes, say “Remember the Athenians; Remember the Athenians.” For some reason the public is not remembering that George Bush — Many of them do, you see that reflected in public opinion, but not necessarily in — It’s not as strong as it was, let’s put it this way.

So my Members want to say this is how we got here. Now it’s not to be unprofessional and not take responsibility for what we had to do, it’s just to say we have a big job to clean up here and this is how we got here, especially on the –

So some people want one facet of the message, and I’m not saying that should be the first to be never forget.

The other is that of course they represent different districts so some issues are more important in one place than they are in another. But all of it comes back to jobs. All of it comes back to jobs and how every vote they have taken has been one to create jobs. I think they have to convey fire the Democrats have within them for working class people in our country. That’s who we are as a party. No matter what anybody tells you about their intentions, we have been there for them and they demonstrated that.

But we will create our message working together. Again, we’re a consensus organization. I can only go where my caucus wants to go and I hope to give them leadership in terms of where I think that should be. But they’re very wise. They’re very wise about what it is.

So it’s about jobs, health care, and education and the security of our country, and all of that again, comes back to the first word, jobs.

The education issue is so important because we talk about education and you think K-12, higher ed. In our population there are so many kids who have so much potential that is not being realized. The education piece isn’t just about let’s make sure they have the fundamentals and they can get a job. This is about genius that is out there. This is about, and it’s throughout our entire population regardless of the demographic or the economic level or whatever it is, and it’s what has grown our country. And with these cuts that have to be made, it’s not just about teachers’ jobs, it’s about the education of our children. It’s not just about firefighters and police officers, it’s about the safety of our neighborhoods. And it’s about them as consumers as well. It’s about jobs.

But the greatness of our country, the basis of our democracy is about education, about opportunity. So when we talk about education it’s not a must say on a list, it’s a fundamental belief that we are squandering the resources of our country by not giving all of our children the same opportunity. They’re not all going to go to the Ivy League, but they should be able to rise to their level of intellectual curiosity and aspiration. And we’re missing that. We’re missing that in our country. And we’re missing something in our economy when we say we don’t have health care so you stay in your job because your kid’s bipolar or has diabetes or something. We’re missing the dynamism of people creating something new if they don’t have to worry about health care, creating a new business or being self employed, or becoming a writer, a painter, or whatever it is. But that dynamism is a very positive thing in an economy that we are missing.

So all of this stuff, and what we can do scientifically, addressing climate crisis and energy independence will catapult us. Other countries are doing it. The EU is way ahead of us.

You should, I was in China in May. If you’ve been there lately you can get blown away by want they’re — Still net emitters, but incredible in what they are doing. What that means for jobs. They do it partially because they know they have to reduce emissions. They do it to create jobs, too. But everybody else realizes that that’s a jobs initiative.

So our founders understood this. President Kennedy called it back with the moon launch. We did his work, called his words back with our innovation agenda.

But we’ve got to — We’ve got to make it happen, and that’s what’s at risk. And that’s what wasn’t happening for the last eight years.

So our responsibility as we go out to the public, and our Members will have a very succinct message. They’re much better than I am at that. But it’s about how we create good paying jobs for them to give them that opportunity. Good paying jobs and education for their children and a clean, safe neighborhood in which they can thrive. Safe crime wise, but safe air wise as well. Again, respecting our troops for what they are doing for our country.

All these wars. Such a tragedy. Such a squandering of resources. But we’re on terrorism, we have to now go further down and engage in that.

But they know who they are, these Members. They know why they came into politics. They can –

They kept health care alive in August. The individual Members, 1,000, 2,000 town meetings or community events or something. They kept it alive. They fought off all of the misrepresentation because they knew who they were and why health care was important.

So they will each have their own message for their district, but it’s about what the Democrats have always stood for — economic security for working families in America. That’s why I come back to what the President said, and we will measure our success by the progress that is being made by those working families.

So are you going to be around tonight? What are you doing tonight? [Laughter.]

David Corn. Watching you.

Speaker Pelosi. It’s a speech that, obviously the world will be watching and we will be taking our lead from. The Members are very excited that the President is coming, as they always are.

Mark Sheilds. Is Mr. Engle positioned?

Speaker Pelosi. I don’t know. Did you know what I did? I sent down a note saying you can’t save a seat. If you want that seat, you sit in it.

Unknown Speaker. I saw him downstairs this afternoon. [Laughter.] He was circling.