Weekly Press Conference With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Press Conference

WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE WITH HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA)

SPEAKER PELOSI: Good morning.

Q Good morning.

SPEAKER PELOSI: We are all very delighted with the fact that we were able to pass the SCHIP bill, the children's health insurance bill, yesterday with a two-to-one majority in the -- in the -- a majority two-thirds margin in the House. We are very excited about sending that on to the Senate so that it will be among the first bills signed by our new president.

On top of our passing pay equity and Lilly Ledbetter last week, Democrats in the Congress and the Congress in a bipartisan way are putting women and children first in the first week of our -- of our new term in Congress. And now we're able to present our economic recovery package.

I know many of you have been concerned about -- not concerned, interested in -- the size and scope of the package. And with practically no sleep on anyone's part, but that not having any impact on their judgment, we were just presenting to our House caucus, and Mr. Obey will be talking to the Republicans on his committee shortly, a package that is $825 billion, 550,000 (sic/billion) of it on the investment side for job creation.

It's about job creation. It's about unprecedented accountability about how that money is spent. It's about clean, efficient energy in America to transform our economy through investments in science and technology. I think you have this. It's about modernizing our roads, bridges, et cetera; education for the 21st century; tax cuts that make work pay and create jobs; and lower -- it has initiatives to lower health care costs and help workers who are hurt in this economy; and to protect our vital services.

So there are elements of it that are about new approaches to the greening of America and also those which address the countercyclical needs of the downturn in the economy. It's -- it's pretty exciting. It is in recognition of the fact that we have more money for investments because we believe that's where job creation is greater.

May I just say to you, especially some of you who may be newer here, this is the first step along the way. We will file a bill. What the Republicans have asked me for is the ability for the bills to be marked up. It will take longer, but perfectly willing to do that.

So next week, the bills will be marked up in committee -- Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce. The following week, we will vote on the floor, send it to the Senate. They will act upon it, go to conference, and then come to agreement, go back to both floors, and send it to the president of the United States, all by the President's Day recess.

We're very excited about it, though, because we had to meet several needs. Of course we wanted to make work pay, and the tax cut for the middle class is important to us. On the revenue side, some of the tax credits for our energy policy are very important. But you will have a further briefing in detail as to what the provisions are in the bill from -- from the chairmen.

But I just want you to know that we have now frozen the design from the standpoint of our proposal. We acted upon the suggestions of the president-elect, Barack Obama. We had some ideas of our own and how we could maybe improve upon or facilitate -- or expedite, let me say -- some of the proposals of the president-elect.

With that, I'd be pleased to take any questions you may have on this subject or any other.

Q Madame Speaker, this has been portrayed as a two-year proposal. How much of this money comes out in year one and how much in year two?

SPEAKER PELOSI: Well, I'm not going to have the specifics for you in that way, but it is calibrated that way. So that we'll have immediate job creation, but that the job creation will continue so that we have stabilization of the economy. Some of it will be immediate. Others, in terms of some of the infrastructure initiatives, will take longer.

But the -- the calibration is between -- all the calibrations we had to have between immediate job creation and then continuing job creation. Jobs created not only for men in infrastructure and building, although women, by contractors or being in nontraditional occupations, benefit from that, but maybe more so on the education and health care side of the bill. All of it stimulus to the economy, all part of the recovery.

And of course, my biggest calibration was the amount. We wanted to get the biggest bang for the buck of every dollar spent without having the package be so big that it -- it weighed down in terms of the -- weighed us down in terms of growing the deficit without a commensurate growth in the economy, revenue coming in to the Treasury.

Q Madame Speaker?

SPEAKER PELOSI: Yes, go ahead.

Q Madame Speaker, can you explain why the tax package you are pursuing is about $25 billion below what Obama has been speaking about?

SPEAKER PELOSI: We -- we have put up the priorities of the Obama -- their suggestions are in there. The net operating loss -- on the net operating loss, one of the changes we made is to say -- and that lowered the amount -- was that none of the money would go to any companies that received any funding from TARP or other rescue packages that are out there now.

It is -- we -- again, that doesn't mean this is the final number, it just means this is the first step that we have put out there. And we go to markup, and we go to the floor, and we go to the conference, and the Senate will act.

But we believe that the goals of creating or saving 4 million jobs are support -- those goals are advanced -- we advance toward those goals by the proposals that we have here. Again --

Q Madame Speaker --

SPEAKER PELOSI: -- bang for the buck; justification, justification, justification for every dollar spent.

Q Speaking of TARP, what is your position on the incoming administration's desire to get the second half?

SPEAKER PELOSI: I'll be happy to go to TARP. One more question on the recovery package, and then I'll go to TARP.

Yes, sir.

Q Madame Speaker, some of your colleagues in the Democratic caucus have called for the AMT patch to be included in the stimulus, in the recovery bill. Do you support that? And why or why not?

SPEAKER PELOSI: Well, I think we have to take it every step of the way and see what we get for it, A. But right now, what we're saying our priorities are: the job creation that is created by the investments on the investment side and by the tax credits; and make work pay with a tax cut for the middle class on the revenue side. Again, this is step one in the process.

On this?

Q Are Senate Democrats supporting this as well? Is the leadership on that side --

SPEAKER PELOSI: Well, this is our Democratic -- I mean, not Democratic -- this is our House package. We try to hear some of the concerns of the Republicans that were interested in net operating loss or bonus depreciation and the rest, which were part of the Obama plan, to see where we had much commonality of interest. The Obama administration will be working with the Senate for their package.

I believe that we have shared values, and so we have shared priorities in the legislation. We try to minimize the differences going in, but they will not be -- I would be surprised, and I'm rarely surprised, if they would be identical. But we will go to conference to resolve the differences on it.

Q Speaker Pelosi?

SPEAKER PELOSI: Okay, no. We just -- I just -- we had one more question. I promised it would be on the -- on the TARP.

Now, what was the exact question?

Q My exact question is, do you support releasing the second half of the $700 billion?

SPEAKER PELOSI: We -- again, we're taking it one step at a time. I believe the Senate is acting today. I don't know how many hours of debate, so I don't know what time that will be. But --

Q Four o'clock.

SPEAKER PELOSI: Is it at 4:00? Oh, okay. You are more attuned to the Senate schedule than I am. And it is -- and we'll see what happens over there, if there's a motion of disapproval, if that passes or fails, and make a judgment about what happens over here.

But I don't think you'll see us support anything unless we have passage of what Barney Frank is putting forth, with accountability, with transparency, openness about this, with requirements and conditions about how -- what -- what conditions should be placed on those receiving the money. Completely -- perhaps we assumed too much in terms of common sense with the first TARP. This will assume nothing as we go forward.

But again, one step at a time, as I have said to my colleagues. Let's see what the Senate does and then make our judgments about what we are going to -- to do here.

But to get back to the recovery package, which is really a cause of great excitement for us because we -- it took a long time to -- again, we know what our priorities are, but within them there are many decisions that have to be made and that have to be made based on how quickly and on a sustained basis they create jobs, what the impact is on our deficit, and how quickly it can turn the economy around for working families in our country.

Can we have one more now?

I'd just like to say one thing about Gaza, and that is that, as I think I mentioned to you last week, I had a conversation with Prime Minister Olmert at the 3rd of January and expressed our support for the state of Israel, of course, but also the concern that we had for the collateral damage, the death and harm to civilian populations.

We, since then, have passed our motion of support of Israel's right to defend itself, in the House. A couple of days ago, was it, I spoke to the President Shimon Peres, again, to get an update from him and to convey, once again, our concern about the civilian deaths on both sides, but of course the numbers are huge on the Gaza side.

Today, I will be meeting with the Egyptian ambassador to get an update of how the negotiations are going in Egypt. We don't have a cease-fire yet, as you probably have noticed. But we're hoping that the negotiations led by the Egyptians, which seem to be productive, will be productive and bring an end to all of this very, very soon.

Thank you all very much.

END.

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