CNN "Newsroom" - Interview with Nancy Pelosi

Interview

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We are going to speak live in a few moments with the White House coronavirus coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx.

But I want to begin with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who joins me now from the Capitol.

Speaker Pelosi, good to see you. I'm glad you and yours are all well.

PELOSI: Thank you.

TAPPER: Let me ask you. Nearly all of your members traveled back to Washington to cast their votes in person on that bill. But a new report in "The Washington Post" this morning says that more than a dozen Democrats think the House right now is failing to meet its constitutional mandate, because it can't really legislate or oversee the coronavirus response.

You heard Congressman Jason Crow says he hasn't had a classified briefing in six weeks. Congressman Denny Heck says Congress is ill- prepared. Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin says the House has not found its footing yet.

What's your response to them? Is it time to allow remote voting during a pandemic?

PELOSI: Well, they're two different issues.

First of all, I'm very proud of our House Democratic Caucus. Their unity, their ideas were able to give us a bill that was so very much improved over what the administration was presenting.

Two weeks ago, the secretary of the Treasury called me and said, I need a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars in 48 hours. I said, I don't think so. We will get back to you.

And when we did, with the leadership of Maxine Waters and Chairwoman Velazquez of the Small Business Committee, Maxine of the Banking Committee, we were able to expand that initiative to include over $110 billion more for small businesses.

And that was a very major achievement, because it strove to -- what it strove to do was to say, no longer will we -- will we harden the lack of access to credit for small women, minority-owned businesses, Native American, veterans, rural businesses, and the rest. We will open the door. So, we got hundred $110 million more loans, more grants and the rest. And we got $100 billion for hospitals and testing.

We think that was a good piece of work for those two weeks.

TAPPER: Right. PELOSI: Yes, I share the frustration that they have about the committees. And we are -- I'm all for doing remote voting by proxy. I want it to be bipartisan. The Republican leader, Mr. McCarthy, has assured me that he will consider this. He's not there yet. He could be there. But whether he is or not, we will we -- our process was to strive to make it bipartisan.

[12:05:00]

But we will -- of course --

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