CNN "State of the Union with Jake Tapper" - Interview with Nancy Pelosi

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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 (sic) 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 the 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. But we will -- of course some of the members are frustrated, because we -- our physical presence isn't here to have a classified briefing. That presence would be necessary.

But, overwhelmingly -- I was very proud that, overwhelmingly, our members participated with their ideas, made the proposal better and worked with us to insist that we will have state and local in the next bill.

[09:05:04]

The administration would not do that...

TAPPER: Well, let's...

PELOSI: ... despite Chuck Schumer working on that as well.

TAPPER: Yes, let's talk about that, because you and -- right.

You and Senator Schumer made this major concession on the most recent legislation, because you made it OK...

PELOSI: It wasn't a concession, yes.

TAPPER: ... in this one for the -- no?

PELOSI: It was...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Well, I mean, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo -- let me...

PELOSI: I understand what Andrew Cuomo said, and I respect his perspective as the governor, but the fact is this.

They wanted 250 for the PPP. We support the PPP. We were part of developing it. Small business is entrepreneurial, part of the optimism of America, so we're for that, but we wanted to include more people and more money for the program and for the hospitals.

TAPPER: Right. No, I...

PELOSI: So, it was always an interim bill. It was always an interim bill.

We always said that CARES 2 would be the bill where we would go for state and local.

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: And we will in a big way.

TAPPER: I -- I get that, but I just want to play for you the sound from New York Governor Cuomo, because he said he needs money for his state to save New York from an economic tsunami.

Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): We have been talking about funding for state and local governments. And it was not in the bill that the House is going to pass today. They said, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, the next bill.

I said to my colleagues in Washington, I would have insisted that state and local funding was in this current bill, because I don't believe they want to fund state and local governments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, Cuomo says he would have insisted on state funding in the last bill.

You -- and now Senator McConnell is saying he wants to push the pause button. Was this a tactical mistake by you and Senator Schumer?

PELOSI: Just calm down. We will have state and local, and we will have it in a very significant way. It's no use going on to what might have been.

The administration never even wanted to do -- let me recap this for you. When we said we're not doing 250 unless you open the door for these lower -- unbanked -- we call them unbanked businesses who don't have a fancy banking relationship or this or that, the -- Senator McConnell said, absolutely no, we're not doing one penny more than 250.

And then, unanimously, he passed on Tuesday $480 billion with many of these increases, including hospitals.

And what we have said for the working on -- we have been working on CARES 2, and on that, we are including not only the outlays that they have for the coronavirus, but also the loss of revenue that they have.

The governors are impatient. I'm a big fan of Governor Cuomo. My own governor, Gavin Newsom, has been spectacular, my mayor, Mayor Breed. The state and local have done their jobs magnificently. They should be impatient. Their impatience will help us get an even bigger number.

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: And that goes for Republican governors too. Governor Hogan of Maryland has been spectacular in all of this.

So, it's many governors...

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: ... many mayors, bipartisan, for us to get the largest amount.

I'm sorry that we had to have an intervention, because we were going from CARES 1 to CARES 2. The intervention came.

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: We made the most of it.

And so, as I say to members, judge it for what it does. Don't criticize it for what it doesn't, because we have a plan for that. And that will happen.

I think you see the response, even from Republican senators, that Mitch McConnell is getting.

TAPPER: So -- well, there's one thing, one point of clarification I was I was wondering.

Vice President Joe Biden's campaign told me earlier this month that he supported President Trump's partial travel restrictions on January 31 blocking foreign nationals from China from coming to the United States.

Do you agree that it was the right move by President Trump at the time?

PELOSI: Well, let's go into the future, OK?

The -- actually, tens of thousands of people were still allowed in from China, so it wasn't, as it is described, as this great moment. There were Americans coming back or green card holders coming back. But there were tens of thousands.

So, if you're going to shut the door because you have an evaluation of an epidemic, then shut the door.

But let's go into the future. What the American people want is for us to have a plan to go forward. And our plan to go forward addresses their concerns.

Their first concern is that our -- our heroes be taken care of, our health care workers, our police and fire, our emergency services, our teachers, our food service people, our -- our transportation workers, our Postal Service, that they be taken care of... [09:10:08]

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: ... because they are taking risks to do their jobs.

Secondly, they want their check. Where's my check, my direct payment, my unemployment check? We're -- and the checks from this PPP. They have all not gotten them, and we have to have oversight as to how quickly that could -- that should be moving.

And the third thing they do not want, what they do not want is...

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: ... any taxpayer dollars, at this difficult time, being used by the big entities that receive billions of dollars for anything other than to keep people at work.

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: They don't want to see any buybacks, any corporate increases in pay, bonuses, dividends, and the rest of that. That makes them very angry.

And we have oversight to do all of that. Protect our heroes.

TAPPER: OK.

PELOSI: Support our workers.

And we were very pleased, in that everything that we did from the first bill, the CARES bill, which was a corporate trickle down to our bill, which was a worker bubble up. We have done four bills.

TAPPER: All right.

PELOSI: We've done them in a very bipartisan way. I'm proud of that.

But we just have to have a path to the future, if we're going -- if and when we can open up, testing, testing, testing, tracing, tracing, tracing, isolation.

TAPPER: OK.

PELOSI: And when we're ready, we will go out there.

But we all -- there's planning. We spend a lot of time on what the president said, when...

TAPPER: Right.

PELOSI: ... and disinfectant in the body.

TAPPER: OK.

PELOSI: You know what they call that? They call that embalming. That's the medical term.

TAPPER: All right, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much.

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