CNN "The Situation Room" - Interview with Nancy Pelosi

Interview

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Joining us now, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Madam Speaker, thank you so much for joining us. We have a lot to discuss.

But, first, what does it say to you that the White House is now revising the projected death toll upward, despite the weeks of social distancing?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, it's just sad. What we have to do is obviously work together to get the job done for the American people. This has to be something that is ethically-based. That is to say, everyone should be tested, so that we can find out in all of our communities the extent of the coronavirus.

We have to have the ability, when we have a vaccine, God willing, soon, but a cure maybe even sooner, that it is available to all Americans, and not a fear of, this is just for some, and we have a limited number of what the crisis is -- amount of people who are affected, because we're not testing enough.

[18:20:10]

So, this is about the lives, the livelihood, and the life of our democracy. And what it says is that we have not sufficiently acted upon the knowledge that we have had. We must insist on the truth.

Whatever went in the past is in the past. We can review that later. But, as we go forward, we must insist upon the truth. And the truth can only be gained by finding out how many people are affected by this.

That's why you see the disparity in some of the incomes of color in our country, because the testing isn't there.

Test, trace, treat, isolate, and then we can start to turn these numbers around. The numbers you -- you mentioned are just heartbreaking.

BLITZER: Yes.

PELOSI: But people are hurting economically as well. We want to see, what's the key to putting -- ending this?

And the key is testing, testing, testing. That was our first bill on March 4. But it was not executed. It was our most recent bill, with $25 billion for testing. That was resisted by the other side, but we did get.

But we still need much more. And we will have it in this legislation CARES 2, that we are writing right now.

BLITZER: Yes, 68,000 confirmed deaths here in the United States over the past two months right now, but even the president says that could go up to 100,000.

Dr. Deborah Birx says the current projection is still between 100,000 and 240,000. So, these numbers are huge. These numbers could double over the next few months as well.

PELOSI: Just heartbreaking.

BLITZER: Let's get to some of the specific issues affecting you and the House of Representatives.

PELOSI: Right. BLITZER: This new White House memo that now says, among other things,

for the month of May, no task force members or key deputies of task force members may accept hearing invitations from the House of Representatives.

The new chief of staff at the White House may make some exceptions, we're told, but the administration says, this is so the task force can focus in on responding to the crisis.

What's your response to that?

PELOSI: Well, I was hoping they would spend more time on the crisis, instead of those daily shows that the president put on.

But the fact is that we need to allocate resources for this in order to do that. And the appropriations bill must begin in the House. And we have to have the information to act upon.

So, the fact that they said, we're not -- we're too busy being on TV to come to the Capitol is -- well, business as usual for them, but it isn't business that will be helpful to addressing this. We need to have the information. We must insist on the truth.

Now, it's interesting. They said, we're not going to the House, but Dr. Fauci can go to the Senate.

I guess Mr. Meadows, being, just until a week or so ago, a member of the House of Representatives, knows that we will be business, very, very strictly insisting on the truth, and they might be afraid of the truth.

BLITZER: You're talking about Mark Meadows, the new White House chief of staff, the former congressman, who's now at the White House.

Let's talk about what's coming up next in terms of another coronavirus stimulus package. I know you have been working on that with your Democratic colleagues.

The Republican leadership's -- leadership says there's no appetite for the type of relief bill you're pushing. The White House says there will be a pause right now before they consider spending any more money.

So, how far away are we from a possible fourth deal?

PELOSI: Well, I think we have to look to the base of support that we have for what we are proposing.

As I said, testing, testing, testing, tracing, tracing, tracing, treatment, treatment, treatment, isolate, this is the key to opening the door, crossing the threshold to bring this to an end.

The other part of it, though, is about our heroes, our state and local, our municipal, our county, our tribal, health care providers, first responders, police and fire, transit workers, Postal Service, all the rest of that. This is very -- they are essential workers for us to get the job done, medicine to seniors.

Really, some of the first responders are in the most dangerous situation, because they don't even have all the PPE, the personal protective equipment, that they need.

So, we have the support of Democratic and Republican governors. The chair of the Governors Association, National Governors Association, the governor of Maryland, Governor Hogan, he and the others have joined together and asked for the amount that they have asked.

It's not for one year. It might be two, maybe a little bit beyond, and the same thing with the municipalities, the League of Cities, the Conference of Mayors, et cetera, Association of Counties, and the rest, to get money down to the areas where delivery of service is.

So, that is all bipartisan. So, we think that there's tremendous support in the country for our heroes. The governors tell me two things that they are united on in terms of Democrats and Republicans. One is to protect our workers. They're our heroes. They're on the front line. They risked their lives to save other lives, and now they may lose their jobs.

[18:25:17]

And the other thing they're united one is another thing -- maybe it's not the only -- is that the -- this amount of money is what they need.

And the money would be used for two things. One is to offset the money that is already spent to address the coronavirus, outlays of money, and the other for revenue lost related to the coronavirus.

So, when the Republicans say, oh, we don't want this and that and their budget, it has nothing to do with anything, other than the coronavirus.

BLITZER: All right.

PELOSI: So, I think we have a very strong case. And I think they will come around to that.

BLITZER: Well, let me play for you what the president said about all your plans on Sunday.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You know, they want bailouts for the states, the Democrats. And, really, it's a number of states that, frankly, have not been managed well by Democrats over a long period of time. So, we have to be very careful about that, very careful.

But we will be doing infrastructure. And I told Steve just today, we're not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PELOSI: You know what?

BLITZER: So, is a pay -- is a payroll tax cut OK, from your point of view?

PELOSI: No, it is not.

BLITZER: Or is it a nonstarter?

PELOSI: No, it is not. It is not.

BLITZER: And if it is a nonstarter, Madam Speaker, why is a payroll tax cut a nonstarter?

PELOSI: First of all -- first of all, this is all to be related to the coronavirus.

We have enormous, enormous costs, much of it incurred because the president was in denial early on, delayed a reaction to it, caused deaths. And so now we want to -- we want to say, OK, that was then. All right, let's start now and do things in a positive way.

Nobody's putting anything on the table and saying, unless we have this, we're not doing that. He shouldn't either.

But, apart from that, look at him saying, these states want to be bailed out. The state they used as an example was Illinois, which got into fiscal problems because of a Republican governor, who was governor there, until Governor Pritzker come to pull it out.

So, it -- what is -- we're talking about life and death. We're talking about people dying. We're talking about people risking their lives to save people's lives. They're -- we're not talking about red state, blue state. We're talking about all America.

BLITZER: But what's wrong with a payroll tax cut?

PELOSI: What is right is, we have -- we have $500 billion for state, $250 billion, maybe 300 billion for local.

This is a way for us -- this is a way for us to address the situation. There are other things we -- direct payment, unemployment insurance, issues like PPP. There's a great deal of money that is being put out there in a way that helps businesses stay open, but not only that, let them have customers when they're open.

So, this is something that has been -- we didn't just start this bill yesterday. This bill was what we were in the works with, with CARES 1. They did 150 for state and local. It wasn't enough. We're continuing that. And we did testing in our first bill March 4, and then testing last week, but we need more for that.

So, all of this are things that are agreed.

BLITZER: So, if the president -- Madam Speaker, excuse me for interrupting. If the president says you could get most of what you want, but he wants a payroll tax cut, otherwise, he's not going to sign it into law, what are you going to do?

PELOSI: Well, I'm not negotiating with the president on television right here.

And he didn't say that. He started denigrating governors who are fighting the fight in their states to save lives and save livelihoods for their people there.

And this, again -- let me say this. Let me tell you about the enthusiasm of our Democrats and the knowledge that our brilliant chairs have about how to meet the needs of the American people, instead of answering the thing of the day that spews forth from the White House.

BLITZER: All right.

PELOSI: This is about saving lives.

This is not about a political economic philosophy.

BLITZER: I totally -- I understand. I understand what you're saying.

And I want to move on to some other issues.

PELOSI: OK. I hope so.

BLITZER: But he did say -- he did say: As I told Steve Mnuchin yesterday -- he said, "We are not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut."

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: So, he's -- he's putting that down.

Let's -- let's move on. I understand you don't want to discuss that.

PELOSI: But it's not a question of discuss it. There's no need drawing any red line in the sand.

You -- you posed, if you got everything you wanted.

Well, did he say that?

BLITZER: I'm saying that.

PELOSI: I know.

(LAUGHTER)

PELOSI: But that's not what he said.

BLITZER: I'm saying, if you got everything -- most of everything you wanted, but he says he wants a payroll tax cut, would that be OK? PELOSI: He didn't say that. He said, I will give them anything they wanted for a payroll -- he didn't say that.

BLITZER: No, he didn't say that. I said that.

PELOSI: You're doing -- you're doing a hypothetical.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Yes.

PELOSI: But let me just say this.

I can't spend a whole lot of time on the quote of the day from the president of the United States. We have worked in a bipartisan way. We have had four bills pass the Congress of the United States, each and every one of them bipartisan. And we're very, very proud of that.

[18:30:03]

We have worked together with our differences. We all didn't get everything we wanted. We had negotiations. We were proud to turn the CARES 1 from a corporate trickle-down to a workers-first bubble-up legislation.

We were pleased in this last interim bill to have it be not just about PPP, which we are all supportive of and were part of creating, but also to go to the underbanked smaller businesses who did not have connections with banks, and not only that, $100 billion for hospitals and for testing, testing, testing.

So, again, we went from 250 to 484. And all that additional was for lower-income, underbanked smaller businesses, minority, women, Native American, veterans, rural, smaller businesses who couldn't compete in the larger banking arena.

And that was a big improvement. We're going to see what the results are, but whatever it is, we made progress, maybe not enough. And we will just have to see where we go from here.

BLITZER: All right. Before --

PELOSI: But we had bipartisanship every step of the way. And we didn't do it by threatening each other, but by sharing values of saving lives, saving livelihoods of the American people.

BLITZER: All right, speaking of bipartisanship, you and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, you rejected an offer from the Trump administration of 1,000 coronavirus tests for members of Congress.

If your work is going to help pass relief, more relief for a lot of American workers, front-line workers and others, why not accept those tests?

PELOSI: Because they don't have them. The fact is, is that we have said that the tests should go to those on

the front line who have direct communication with -- contending with this.

Our physician, our Capitol physician, has said we don't need to have them in terms of exposure that we have. We are not -- the testing organization said to us, you're not next. We can bump you in line and push other people out of the way, but you're not -- you're not next in terms of essential workers for this.

So, if any individual member, in their own privacy -- I'm not going into their lives -- has a need for a test, then that's up to the doctor to determine. But we're not going to say -- we have -- we have custodians in the Capitol. We have people who work with thousands of people who make the Congress function, making this happen, again, protecting us, as well as keeping it safe in terms of this virus.

But outside, and our first responders and the rest, they should be getting this before we do. And I don't know there's one member of Congress who says, I want to have a test before my constituent who really needs one gets one because I should be more important than that.

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: I was very pleased that we were able to do that in a bipartisan way, House and Senate.

BLITZER: Yes, that -- that was certainly bipartisan, indeed.

I know you got a lot going on. Thanks so much for joining us.

And thanks also for that face mask you have around your neck. I know you just flew back from California. And you were telling me you wore that the whole flight; is that right?

PELOSI: The whole flight. I had to, like, sip water underneath, but, yes, the whole flight.

And everybody on the plane had on a face mask, including the crew. And that -- that's -- I highly recommend it.

But the thing is, is that it breaks your heart to see -- hear the stories, not -- and a matter of life and death, so sad, and, again, the heartbreak of people with a dream for a small business, an idea, and the rest, and then see it fade.

We want to make sure that what we do is for those who truly need it, and that we will get through this in a way that has ended some of the disparities. We have frozen access to credit for some people. And now, with this bill, we can open some of that up.

So, whether it's access to credit or access to care, we want to be sure that, as sad as this all is, that we make progress in terms of -- I will end where I began -- with the ethics of it all, that it's available to all Americans. BLITZER: Madam Speaker, thank you so much for joining us.

I know you're incredibly busy. We're grateful to you for spending a few moments here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Thank you very much.

PELOSI: Thank you. Take care.

BLITZER: You too.

PELOSI: And thank you to CNN for all you're doing to spread the word.

BLITZER: Thank you very much. And good luck.

PELOSI: Thank you.

BLITZER: Good luck to you guys up on Capitol Hill.

PELOSI: Thank you.

BLITZER: Appreciate it very much.

PELOSI: Thank you.

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