Focused read in 10 minutes
Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi surrounded by health care workers from various
states...
(January 25th) Congresswoman Pelosi's Press Conference Excerpts, with a Focus on the Affordable Care Act & a Broader Q & A with
Reporters...
"Leader Pelosi. Good
morning, everyone.
I think we could all agree
that few people have a more intimate understanding of the stakes of
the healthcare debate and people’s lives than America’s nurses.
As Republicans forge ahead with their plan to repeal the Affordable
Care Act and Make America Sick Again, it is my privilege to be joined
by nurses from across the country who stand on the front lines of
America’s health care. They’re here to share their stories,
stories that show exactly what’s at stake if Republicans succeed in
destroying the Affordable Care Act in America.
It is my honor to welcome
Vicki Gonzalez of Miami, Florida, Michael Collins of Las Vegas,
Nevada, Cathy Stoddart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Dian Palmer
of Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
When we passed the
Affordable Care Act, the nurses across the country were an important
part of our pushing open that gate that was a barrier to passing the
bill. I thank you for that....
Vicki, thank you for
making it clear how much more expensive emergency care will be...
Michael, that every one of
your patients has a preexisting condition...
Cathy, talking about her
personal story as well as her professional experience with a
preexisting condition and the cost and the debilitating impact it can
have on a family to have a preexisting condition and not have the
health insurance that they should have. Thank you for that,
Cathy, and thank you for emphasizing Medicaid, because that is so
important to the Affordable Care Act.
People don’t understand
that Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act are now wedded
together. If you overturn and repeal the Affordable Care Act,
you have a negative impact on Medicaid at a time when people need it
more than ever...
The power of the stories
that you have told is multiplied by the statistics and the facts, the
facts, the real true facts. Last week – don’t take it from
me – the facts coming from the Congressional Budget Office, whose
Director is appointed by a Republican Speaker, stated that repealing
the ACA will double premiums for Americans in the individual market
by 2026, would increase the number of uninsured by 18 million people
in the first year of enactment, and surge to 32 million people by
2026, the Congressional Budget Office.
And now you mentioned the
situation with hospitals. Hospitals will also be devastated, Michael talked about
this, by ACA repeal, because they would be left with uncompensated
care to the tune of billions of dollars. You know, hospitals
are the one entity where you have to provide care if someone comes in
even if you are not compensated for it, and the Affordable Care Act
addressed that, creating jobs and opportunity in areas.
...narrow access,
increased cost, and reduced benefits cut jobs and increase the
deficit. Repeal would kill nearly 3 million jobs, not only in
health care, but in every sector affected, from construction, to real
estate, to retail.
...Last Friday, January 20,
we saw the peaceful transfer of power, inaugurating a new President. The next morning, America awakened to a peaceful show of power where
women across the country, indeed across the world, turned out in the
millions in crowds that dwarfed the Inaugural crowd. In the
days after, the President and the Republican Congress launched a
major assault on women’s access to comprehensive health care not
only here in America, but around the world.
On Monday, the Trump
administration reinstated the global gag rule that silences even the
discussion of women’s reproductive choices. Yesterday, House
Republicans passed and expanded an even more dangerous version of the
Hyde Amendment that would restrict how women with private insurance
can spend their private dollars in purchasing health coverage.
So here we are.
...And, back to the March, no
longer will being a woman be a preexisting medical condition.
The American people are
waking up to the nightmare of what Republicans have planned for the
healthcare of women, seniors, and working families. Democrats
will stand our ground to defend the Affordable Care Act because we
believe, I think we can all attest that we believe that health care
in America is a right for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
I thank again the nurses
for joining us today and for your leadership in caring for America.
The testimony that you bring is intimate, it’s personal, it has
policy ramifications. You help us make the case, and we are
very grateful to you for that. Thank you so much. Thank
you all.
You may want to step aside
when I have to take questions on some other subjects. But,
first, let us again, I thank you for coming.
I would like to confine
the questions first to the subject at hand.
Yes, ma’am.
Q: ...yesterday Senators Cassidy and Collins put out a plan for replacing
Obamacare, the Patient Freedom Act 2017, and in that they even say
that the States could keep the Obamacare exchanges if they want to.
Also Rand Paul has put out a plan to replace Obamacare, and I keep
hearing that there is no plan to replace it. Do you stand by
that?
Leader Pelosi. Well,
in other words, what others have said on the Republican side of the
aisle is that – I believe even the chairman of the Health
Committee, Chairman Alexander – that they really can’t act unless
they see something from the President of the United States, his
proposal. So while individuals may have some suggestions, we
have to see what is their proposal.
... there are a lot of
things out there. I don’t know who is speaking for what.
But even the chairman of their committee has said that they want to
see something from the President.
Yes, ma’am?
Q: ...Donald Trump this morning tweeted that he is going to be calling for
a major investigation into voter fraud. What is your reaction
to that?
Leader Pelosi. You
know, there is no evidence to support what the President has said,
and I think we made that really clear to him in our conversations
with him. But I am very pleased that our colleagues, Mr.
Cummings, Mr. Clyburn...
And
Brady, the ranking member on the House Administration Committee,
three leaders in the Congress, have sent a letter to all of the
attorneys general across the country, any place that votes for the
President, including the District of Columbia, and saying, give us
the names of anyone that you suspect is guilty of voter fraud.
...For a person who
is the newly-elected President of the United States to be so insecure
as to declare that he is now the President and he is ensconced in the
White House and he is saying, “I won the popular vote and 3 to 5
million Americans voted illegally in our country,” to suggest and
to undermine the integrity of our voting system is really strange.
But in addition to that,
on top of it, he wants to investigate something that can clearly be
proven to be false, but he resists any investigation of the Russian
disruption of our election and any connection to his campaign.
All we want is the truth
for the American people. I, frankly, feel very sad about the
President making this claim. I felt sorry for him. I even
prayed for him. But then I prayed for the United States of
America.
Any other questions?
Yes, ma’am?
Q: What is your
response to the anticipated executive orders from President Trump on
immigration and refugee resettlement?
Leader Pelosi. Well,
we haven’t seen actually everything that he is going to do. I
understand he is going to the Department of Homeland Security today,
and we will see some of – we have heard rumors of what he might
say, but I have always opposed any policy that excluded people on the
basis of their religion....
Yes, ma’am?
Q: ...are there divisions among Democrats right now between people calling
on leadership to work as well as they can with Republicans versus
people pushing Democratic leadership to be more liberal, especially
after the losses that the party took?
Leader Pelosi. No.
No, there is not a division. No. We have said if the
Republicans – obviously we pledged to the American people a
responsibility to find common ground with the Republicans, as we did
with President Bush...
We stand ready to do
that. If they want to have a real infrastructure proposal, not
a tax break for wealthy people disguised as an infrastructure
proposal, they want to talk about home and family, family and work
balance, which they spoke about in the campaign, we look forward to
working with them, as I said in the opening day gavel speech as I
gave the gavel to Speaker Ryan, and other issues where we might find
common ground.
But when we don’t find
common ground, we will stand our ground. On the Affordable Care
Act, we are standing our ground. But there is no division, no.
...
Q: On President
Trump’s announcement to freeze Federal hiring, do Democrats have a
plan to fight that? And specifically, how does it affect the
VA? Because I know that lawmakers have been working on a
bipartisan level to staff that agency up.
Leader Pelosi. Yes.
The freeze on hiring, which was really unfortunate, because what that
is, is to say we don’t believe in the government role to meet the
needs of the American people. So when they attack the workers,
they are attacking what they do, making sure people get their Social
Security checks, meeting the needs of our veterans, Medicare, the
list goes on and on.
And so when they did this
freeze, they said we exempt national security, but that did not
include veterans...
But it’s always been
part of their kind of agenda to say we want to reduce the Federal
workforce so we can privatize a lot of the services, then we don’t
have to honor any value of diversity or worker’s rights and the
rest of that.
So I think that they will
see some bipartisan opposition to what they are doing, because many
Federal employees work in the districts of Republicans as well as
Democrats. But this is an assault on doing our job for the
American people, but it is not any surprise.
Yes, ma’am?
Q: ...back to H.R. 7, what do you say to your Catholic constituents who may
be relieved to no longer know that their tax dollars will go to fund
abortions?
Leader Pelosi. ...There has not
been taxpayer dollars spent on abortions. You know that.
So this is fraudulent, it’s fraudulent. And what they’re
doing is making it more dangerous so that people can’t spend their
own dollars in the exchanges to have access to reproductive rights.
So we will fight that, and my constituents support that.
...
Q: ...on
these gag orders that have been issued to the EPA in terms of it
speaking to media, but also the withdrawal of some climate
references, taking down the climate change pages on the EPA site, are
you aware of these actions that are going on in the administration,
and what can Democrats do about it?
Leader Pelosi. Well,
what can the American people do about it, you know? We have
said and I said in my opening day speech here, if you want to silence
our voices for commonsense gun violence prevention, we will fight
that. You cannot silence people’s voices. And it is a
deterioration of intellectual resources to prevent information to
flow. That’s what has made America great, that we have open,
we listen to ideas, we exchange them. And any country that
doesn’t does so to their own detriment.
So I would hope that the
press would be a very important part of calling out how unfair this
is to even have information available to the press, because I do
believe, although we don’t always agree on your coverage, as
President Obama said, that the true guardian of our democracy is the
freedom of the press that is in the First Amendment. That is
the most important freedom, because that says we can speak, people
will know truth, truth and freedom. Truth will set us free.
And so what they are doing should be just appalling to people if they
knew about it, but they shouldn’t be doing that.
Q: Do Democrats
intend to send a letter to the administration or otherwise…
Leader Pelosi. Well,
we’ll see what we’ll do. I mean, do you think they care
about a letter? I think it’s more about public sentiment.
As Abraham Lincoln said, public sentiment is everything. With
it you can do almost everything, without it almost nothing. So
it’s about public sentiment.
They probably wouldn’t
even respond to a letter because they don’t want information...we’ve always had sort of a, I don’t want to say
tradition, but a standard where you agree to a set of facts or some
numbers or a baseline, and then you go from there. We respect
each other’s opinion, we respect the position that some might have,
be it more conservative, more progressive. That is the American
way. But at least when you try to negotiate you’re dealing
from a set of facts instead of being in a fact-free zone or whatever
they want to call their version of reality.
Q: ...along those lines, you have met the President a couple of
times, we have seen a few days of the new administration. Do
you have any new ideas on how you will confront them? Has your
thinking evolved on that at all?
Leader Pelosi. Well,
it is interesting because I saw him at the inauguration and we had a
chance to chat at the White House coffee or tea, whatever, before we
came to the Capitol and talked about how we could find common ground
on infrastructure, and I hope that that is the case. Then the
invitation for the leadership to come to the White House and bond, I
guess, is probably what it was, was welcome because, again, we don’t
have to agree on everything to agree on some things, right?
But it was
really quite startling when the President declared that he won the
popular vote because 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in our
country, which was not fact based and evidence based.
But in addition to that, I had the impression – now, I had the
impression that he was saying, Carolyn, that that didn’t even
include California.
So, again, we
have to stipulate to a set of facts. If we’re going to talk
about infrastructure, if we’re going to talk about child care, if
we’re going to talk about early childhood education, we have to
stipulate to the facts.
So
you can disagree. What could be worse than the Iraq war?
You can disagree strongly on one subject – what could be worse than
privatizing Social Security? But have agreement on other
subjects, and that is what we hope to do with this President.
Because we have that responsibility to find that common ground if we
can, to stand our ground if we can’t, but also to just stipulate to
a set of facts as we go forward, because if we don’t, there is
absolutely no way you can come to an agreement that has legitimacy
and is valid for the American people.
Just one more? One
more? Who shall it be? ...
You can read the transcript in full here
And you can watch the briefing video here
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