Press Conference with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Boehner Passage of the Economic Stimulus Bill

Interview

REP. PELOSI: Good afternoon.

Today we accomplished a great deal for the middle class. We accomplished passage of a bill in a bipartisan way to give relief to tens of millions, in fact, over 100 million American families. It's focused on the middle class and those aspiring to that status.

I'm pleased to say that the legislation passed by over 10 to 1, a ringing statement -- a ringing statement -- that a) a stimulus is needed, and that they respected the timeliness of the target and the temporary nature of the bill. I'm pleased to be standing here with the Republican leader, Mr. Boehner. Working with him and with the administration, we were able to achieve this success today.

I myself, as speaker of the House, would like to call upon the Senate to pick up our legislation and to pass it quickly. It is essential. It'll relieve some of the hardship that America's families are feeling.

Many Americans in the middle class are living paycheck to paycheck. They're feeling -- they have a struggle with the rising cost of groceries, of gasoline, of health care. The list goes on. Today Congress acted in a way that is directly relevant to their lives, and we hope that the Senate will follow suit.

Mr. Boehner.

REP. BOEHNER: Well, Madame Speaker, thank you, and let me begin by saying thank you for the opportunity to work together on behalf of the American people.

You know, a lot of Americans don't think that anything can happen in a bipartisan way here in Washington. And I think what this shows is that there are areas of common agreement. There are areas that are in the best interest of the American people, where we can sit down and resolve this. And I hope that this agreement, that we've been able to work through, will serve as an example to people that Washington can in fact work.

The speaker outlined the squeeze that American middle-class families are facing. We're all well aware of it. And I believe that the agreement that we've come to will help provide a shot in the arm to the economy and hopefully prevent a recession from occurring. And I think the tax relief going to middle-class American families -- it will, in fact, happen in a timely way, and I think it's important.

I think the investment that was -- been made, in terms of tax relief and incentives to the business community, will, in fact, work. They're going to buy more equipment, decisions that they've put off -- these are incentives for them to move now that will help preserve employment and help create new employment.

And so I think it was a -- it was a good agreement on behalf of the American people. And I agree with the speaker; I hope that the Senate will take this bill up and just pass it. The key to this whole exercise in providing this economic growth incentive is to do it now, before the economy slows any further. And the quicker the Senate acts, the better.

Madame Speaker, I want to thank you and your staff and my staff, along with Secretary Paulson and his staff, who all worked on this over a period of about a week. And for those of you that can imagine how this negotiation went, I can tell you that it was polite, it was substantive, and it was not near as difficult as a lot of people would think.

REP. PELOSI: Well, it was urgent. And I think that it --

REP. BOEHNER: (Laughs.) It was urgent.

REP. PELOSI: -- it reflected the urgency being felt by the American people. And again, it has discipline to it, and a focus to it that I hope the Senate will take heed of because it will do, as Mr. Boehner said, create jobs. It will create jobs by injecting demand into the economy, by putting money into the pockets of America's middle class and by -- with the tax incentives through businesses to make their decisions in a timely fashion. It's temporary, so they have to act upon this, and that will create jobs as well.

So the sense of urgency, the leadership of Mr. -- Secretary Paulson was very important to all of this, and there was a respect for the values that we all brought to the table on this.

Q Since you agreed on this, do we expect other agreements on other issues? Earmarks, other issues, where there are wedges?

REP. PELOSI: Well, this is not our first agreement. We were able to put many pieces of legislation on the president's desk which he signed.

Our 9/11 commission recommendations, H.R. 1 -- from the very first bill to one of the last bills of the last session of Congress, the energy bill, and many in between: the minimum wage, the -- making college affordable, biggest increase in health benefits for America's veterans, the innovation agenda, the list goes on. So hopefully this will serve as a model for this year as we go forward.

Q Madame Speaker?

REP. BOEHNER: There were a lot of -- we had a lot of those bills toward the end of the session that I was much happier about than those at the beginning of session.

REP. PELOSI: (Chuckles.)

Q The Senate Finance Committee tomorrow is likely to pass a bill that gets rid of the income cap, that adds a bunch of other stuff. What impact will that have on this deal, if that's what passes the Senate?

REP. BOEHNER: Well, I don't want to preempt the prerogatives of the Senate. They're a separate institution; they have their own rules and their own rights to do their own legislation.

But having said that, the speaker and I have been through this process of all of these other ideas that people want. And you should understand that both the speaker and I have received hundreds of letters, all signed by a bipartisan group of members, asking for X, Y, Z, through not only the English alphabet but the Greek alphabet as well. And you know, they're all very good ideas, but don't quite meet the need for economic growth in a timely fashion, money that will go directly into the economy.

And I think as we found out, once you begin to look at all of these other independent issues, it gets to be very difficult to come to an agreement. I think that most Americans are expecting that they're going to get 300 (dollars) to $600 from the federal government this summer. All of these other brilliant ideas will do nothing more than to reduce the size of the checks that the American people are expecting. I'm not sure that's going to go over real well.

REP. PELOSI: Let me just say that what was very important to us as we put this together was that it would be a stimulus, and that what we did in our stimulus package would do no harm or hinder our ability to work for recovery. And so it was important to my members, and I know -- I'm certain on the Republican side -- that we have fiscal discipline here. So we decided on an amount of money and how it would be spent, and if the Senate is to spend it another way, we don't want it to be at the cost of the middle class because this was a decision to go this route. And we don't want to, again, grow the package so that we're getting further in debt.

This is what we think can be handled, that will be stimulus, that will inject demand, will create jobs. And some of these other issues are excellent ideas, and I advocated for them myself, and they can be done in other legislative vehicles. And that's what I hope that the Senate will take heed.

It's not unprecedented that one house would yield to the legislation of another. I mean, we did that with SCHIP. We didn't get it signed into law, but we had a far different package coming out of the House than what the Senate did on SCHIP, if you recall. And yet, in the interest of moving the legislation along, we took the bipartisan bill, the bipartisan bill that the Senate had, which didn't have what we in the House had put forth, but we took that bill and ran with that. I hope that the Senate will return the favor, and take this bill and run with it. This we will have signed into law.

Q Madame Speaker, Senator McConnell is asking to do just that: put your bill on the floor without any amendments. Should Reid disagree to that, to schedule this without slowing it down with a markup tomorrow?

REP. PELOSI: All I would say is I would hope that the Senate would take up our bill and pass it, so that this can be as timely as it needs to be.

Thank you.

REP. BOEHNER: Thank you.

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