Press Conference With House Minority Leader Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)...

Federal News Service

November 3, 2004 Wednesday

HEADLINE: PRESS CONFERENCE WITH HOUSE MINORITY LEADER REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (D-CA); AND REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT MATSUI (D-CA) LOCATION: DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:

REP. PELOSI: (Fed in progress) -- reelected president, we'll take some time now to give you our report.

Thank you very much for being here today. I want to extend my congratulations to President Bush on his victory. We look forward to working with him for the benefit of the American people. We will seek our common ground with him; where don't have it, we will stand our ground for expanding access to health care, for creating many, many millions more jobs for the American people, for broadening opportunity for education; for fighting a war in a way that protects our civil liberties, brings our young people home safely and soon, but not before the job is done.

We have our differences of opinion, there's no question about that. But President Bush has won the election, and we wish him success. We hope that this time he will be the uniter that he said he would be in the past four years. That didn't happen. He has a second chance now. We hope that that will be the case. Our country really, really, truly needs reconciliation.

I congratulate Senator Kerry on an excellent race. I thought he ran a great race. He debated the-he infused the debate with great intellect, with great passion, with great conviction on the issues of opportunity and prosperity and community and fairness in our country. The graciousness of his concession speech I think will be a healing one for the American people, but also one that says to all the young people, and new voters, and energized voters who turned out that the fight is not over; that as we try to work together we must, must always fight for the issues important to America's future. I'm very, very proud of his candidacy.

I spoke to Senator Daschle this morning. I want to salute him for his 26 years of public service and leadership to the American people and the people of South Dakota. We will be working together as leaders in the House and Senate in the lame-duck session, so I look forward to welcoming him back, and I think he will always be a tremendous resource to our country, certainly to the Democrats in the House and Senate.

I spoke also with the speaker this morning and extended my congratulations to him. He was riding his truck at the time. He said, "Don't you know I'm a farmer?" I said, "Well, I knew a wrestler, and I knew a wrestling coach, and I knew a teacher, and I know a speaker, I didn't know a farmer. But so be it." We both talked about how we hoped we could work together for the public good.

I am very, very-have to acknowledge the loss that we had last night with our incumbents in Texas.

Obviously, the DeLay Texas strategy worked, taking out so many of our incumbents there, particularly once you acknowledge Martin Frost, part of the leadership of the House Democrats for so long and ranking member on our Rules Committee, and Charlie Stenholm, ranking on Agriculture-two great leaders in the Congress-as well as Nick Lampson and Max Sandlin for their great leadership for Texas and for our country. They will be missed, all of them. We lost one incumbent outside of Texas, Baron Hill, and I salute him as well for his leadership. He brought the values of the heartland of America to the Congress, and again, he will be missed. I know that the public service of all of those members will not end here.

We are very excited about new members. Many are experienced public officials, legislators, mayors, judges, people from the private sector and business community. Our caucus will be infused with their energy, their enthusiasm, their idealism, some of them their youth. They will be voices for their generation. And when they come here, they bring the hopes and aspirations of their constituents. And I hope that their voices will not be snuffed out by the Republican majority in the House, that there will be a new openness here so alternative views may be heard and that the opportunity to work together will exist and that these members will not have fought the fight to come here and be disappointed about the opportunity that they have.

I think that-I hear the Republican leadership saying they're going to reach out to Democrats. I hope that is the case. We have important work to do. Millions of Americans are out of work, millions of Americans-tens of millions of Americans are without access to quality health care. Education is an uncertainty for many because the cost of higher education and because of a lack of opportunity when they start school because of No Child Left Behind being starved of funds. You know the issues. The list goes on and on. We'll talk about them some more.

We were on a tough playing field. You knew that. We knew that. I'm proud of the effort that was made. I think we held our own yesterday, when you consider what else happened out there in the campaign arena. And I want to pay special tribute to our very effective, astute chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Bob Matsui. He was a maestro. He orchestrated campaigns across the country in a way that minimized the damage to our caucus, contributed-again, as I mentioned of Senator Kerry-to the debate on the issues that was wholesome.

We had campaigns that will now hold the Republican members if they are new or if they are reelected to a different standard; that they have to honor the commitments they are making to their-their own constituents and that the spotlight will be on them.

And so with that, I want to say to Bob Matsui on behalf of the millions of new voters, young voters that we reached out to, the millions of pieces of mail, the thousands of volunteers and phone calls and all the rest, those people look to us to continue the fight. Hopefully it's one that honors discourse, not discord, and that will be worthy of the people who send us here. That was all-our opportunities were all broadened by the exceptional leadership of Bob Matsui.

Mr. Chairman.

REP. MATSUI: Thank you very much, Mr. (sic) Leader. I just want to thank you for inspiring the entire Democratic Caucus. As many of you know, we raised over $80 million. Obviously, $23 million came from the Democratic Caucus, the Democratic members themselves. They raised over $4 million for obviously many of our challengers and obviously the Democratic incumbents that needed help. And without that leadership, Leader Pelosi, that you've provided to all of us, that would not have happened, and I think that was one of the reasons that we did as well as we did, given the circumstances that we had.

I think, as the leader said, there's no question that Texas was our Achilles Heel at the end of the day. When the decision was made last December by the court to uphold the DeLay-my view-illegal reapportionment, essentially what happened is that it did create a situation where people thought that the House was not attainable by the Democrats. But losing the four seats, obviously we picked up four additional Republican-held seats now in Democratic hands. And as the leader has said, these are all great candidates and great members-they will be great members.

And obviously, we look to 2006. We're going to be out there recruiting candidates. We're going to be raising money. We're going to be putting together what I believe to be a great campaign because Nancy Pelosi will be speaker of the House in a very short period of time.

Let me just conclude by making, you know, one other observation, if I may. I hope, as the leader has said, that President Bush will be a uniter and that he will be a compassionate conservative. But unfortunately, I believe his campaign, when he talked about Social Security privatization, which would do great damage to senior citizens; when he talked about the fact that he wants to reexamine the tax code and perhaps go to a sales tax that will do major damage to middle-class Americans, people making $90,000 or less; and when basically talked about the status quo internationally, particularly the war in Iraq, I think we're going to have to actually hope that he comes to us and hopefully tries to find some way that we can work on a bipartisan basis on these issues because if, in fact, he continues to do what he did for the last four years, I believe, unfortunately, it's going to be a very, very difficult time and we have problems that have to be solved.

I think what happened to some extent is that with this political campaign that went on for eight or nine months, everything got frozen in place.

It's my belief that within the next few days he's going to have to talk to the American public about Iraq and what he intends to do. We're losing too many troops. Obviously there's a status quo that is unacceptable, and we just cannot allow the situation to continue without any further leadership and any further creativity from the administration.

So again, let me just say this too: I don't think there's any question-and I want to be very candid-that we did not get the win, the uplift that we had expected in this campaign. The red states after the debates got redder, and as a result of that it made it more difficult for our candidates, particularly Baron Hill-it's so tragic that we lost him. And in the blue states, they got a little bluer but not substantially bluer.

And I think, again, were it not for Texas, we would have had a net gain of two, and of course, we do have the two districts in Louisiana that undoubtedly in December we'll all be working on. But I do want to thank the leader for her leadership in the Democratic Caucus and for obviously inspiring all the Democratic members of our caucus.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you, Bob.

Any questions?

Q You-I guess Mr. Matsui actually. You just talked about the issue of Social Security and tax cuts and whatnot. But the president did win the election. The Republicans gained in both chambers. I mean, isn't there something about the election that says maybe they were right on those issues? I mean, that's-the American people did give the president another term. Why is he not right on those issues for the American people?

REP. MATSUI: Well, I think what will determine what is right or what is wrong will be the actual policy itself. I mean, if in fact we're going to privatize Social Security and not provide the transition funds of about $2 trillion over the next 10 years to pay for the transition, you're going to be cutting benefits for all seniors that are currently receiving benefits, and in addition, survivors and disability benefits. And I don't think that's necessarily a correct decision or a good policy. So the reality is I think we have to look at the policy.

I think the prescription drug bill was a great example of that. The Republicans were saying they wanted to move a prescription drug bill. It turned out to be a very bad piece of legislation. And I would not suggest for a moment that we should accept bad legislation like that.

Q From the philosophical standpoint though, the American people put their faith in that Republican philosophy.

REP. MATSUI: If I just may say to-because we're not just going to have a conversation; we have many other questions here. The president said to the American people that no seniors who are on Social Security today would be affected by this. He didn't deny that he was going to privatize Social Security, but he wanted to give the impression that he would. But in fact, all seniors would be affected by it, because who do you think pays into Social Security but the people who are working today?

So it's not about what is the fact, it is what is the perception was to the public out there. He said flat out no seniors would be affected; simply was not true.

Any other-yes?

Q Madame Leader, just following up a little bit on that, I mean, basically, the Republicans who have been talking today, you know, say that they have a mandate. They say that this election proved that they should move-you know, Tom Reynolds used the term "green light." George Allen also said that this meant-you know, this gives rise to the need for tort reform, for more tax cuts, et cetera. Can you say to what extent you think the Republicans have a mandate in light of this?

REP. PELOSI: You and I know and all of you in this room know that for the last several years the Republicans have had control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Now the American people are fully aware of that. So the responsibility to get a job done rests on them, to create jobs, to expand access to health care, to educate our people, to protect our environment, to protect our country and preserve our civil liberties, to bring our troops home when the job is done. So they have to be accountable now in an even more specific way than before because any doubt in anyone's mind as to who is in control here has now been removed.

But the election-the election that-when people voted, the Republicans did not have an election about jobs, health care, education, environment, national security; they had an election about wedge issues in our country, and you know what they are. They exploited the loveliness of the American people, the devoutness of people of faith to-for a political end. That's one of the reasons they won that election. This was not a referendum on privatizing Social Security. It simply was not.

And that is the job that we will have coming up, to inform the American people as to what the decisions that are made here on a daily basis are and how they affect their lives, and how they're-you know, "Democrats are going to ban the Bible if they're elected;" imagine the ridiculousness of that, but it won votes for them-how that approach to winning does not translate into undermining and unraveling Social Security, to use your example for our seniors.

Yes, ma'am?

REP. MATSUI: Can I-can I just follow up? May I just follow up on that? What-I would hope that Mr. Hastert would introduce a Social Security bill that would allow 2 percent or 3 percent of payroll taxes to be diverted for investments by current workforce and make sure that no benefits are cut, either survivor's, disability or retirement benefits. We have been asking him actually for the last four years to introduce a bill or at least cosponsor such a bill. He has not done so.

Perhaps the president should actually introduce, within the next 30 days or so, or maybe when he takes office after being sworn in, a new piece of legislation on Social Security. We want him to do this so we can really start this debate. We do have a shortfall.

Lastly, I hope Tom DeLay does try to move the national retail sales tax, the Linder bill, H.R. 25, because I think the American public needs to debate whether or not that legislation will actually hurt the economy, will hurt middle-class Americans, and will actually reduce and change the tax burden so middle-class Americans will pay more.

Instead of talking about these things conceptually, now-if they have a mandate, they have an obligation to bring it forward to the House of Representatives on the floor for a vote.

Q Congressman Stenholm for years took Social Security reform as one of his lead issues. Do you see someone in your party coming up to take over that position, maybe work with Representative Kolbe on the issue?

REP. PELOSI: Well, Mr. Matsui, you know, is a 26-year veteran of the Ways and Means Committee and the ranking Democrat on that subcommittee of importance. So I know there are plenty of leaders here. We will miss Mr. Stenholm's leadership there --

REP. MATSUI: We will.

REP. PELOSI: -- but nonetheless, there will be others.

Yes, ma'am?

Q Oh, yeah, given that Senator Kerry lost, there are now 55 Republican senators, and you have lost seats, is this a time for Democrats to maybe do a little soul-searching what went wrong?

REP. PELOSI: Our Democrats in the House of Representatives are one of the greatest resources for America, for our children, for our workers, for our seniors, for our future. As their leader, I fully intend to go forward to exploit the opportunities that are there for them to fight the fight.

We put forth, about two months ago, our New Partnership for America's Future-it was our legislative agenda-will be taking a legislative form when we come back into session.

So we have been working together in a unified way in the House of Representatives, in a way that has established priorities about the future. And it's not about soul-searching. It may be about how we can educate the American people more clearly on the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But we know what the soul of the Democratic Party is, and it's about prosperity and community and opportunity and fairness. It's about accountability, and it's about protecting our country.

Q Well, Madame Leader, can I --

REP. PELOSI: You and then-Ed and then you.

Q The exit polling showed that morality became a huge issue for Republican voters in particular. And that-the same day, yesterday, how many states was it, 10 or something, approved bans on same-sex marriage. Do you think it was a mistake for the Democratic Party to be identified so much with gay rights? And specifically, do you think it was a mistake for our Mayor Newsom to marry those 4,000 couples?

REP. PELOSI: Well, without getting into local politics here, I don't think it was a mistake for the Democrats in the House and the Senate, joined by some Republicans, to say we refused to stain the Constitution of the United States with an amendment that would narrow freedom in our country. I don't think that that was a mistake, no.

What people do at the local level are decisions that they have to make there.

But to your larger point, the Republicans tried to use these kinds of issues about faith and gay rights, et cetera, because they had no case to make on job creation-the worst record in seven decades; on expanding access to health care -- 5 million more people without it under President Bush; 30 years of bipartisan, bipartisan progress on the environment quietly and quickly rolled back; starving No Child Left Behind and creating crushing debt for our children when they want to go to college.

So they didn't have a case to make on the issues; they had to go to the wedge issues, which were very divisive in our country. Let's hope that the president will now put that back.

Richard, yes?

Q Madame Leader, if I could ask-get you to-ask you to talk a little bit more about what happened yesterday, especially in the blue states. I mean, you were pretty upbeat about not only winning back the House, but defeating Republican incumbents. And in states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Republican incumbents did just fine, they held on in open seats. Why were Republicans able to survive in Kerry states?

REP. PELOSI: Well, two reasons. First of all, as Bob-as Chairman Matsui said earlier, we had a big challenge in the red states; the intensity of the Bush support in those states necessitated our allocation of resources to protect our incumbents, which is and will always be our top priority. So that had an impact on the election, the intensity in the red states.

In the blue states we had some victories. We went right in to the speaker's backyard and took out-politically speaking, that is-the longest-serving Republican in the Congress, Phil Crane. That was a major accomplishment in a district that is not a Democratic district. We took out-well, we won four Republican seats, and I'm very pleased with those.

The notice has been served, though, on these other Republican incumbents that they no longer can masquerade as moderates at home when they vote 8 out of 9 -- 9 out of 10 times with Tom DeLay in Washington, D.C. The spotlight is on them.

I may also add that a number of these moderates chose not to run again because they could not explain their record at home in districts that are moderate in terms of their politics but very conservative, radical right wing in terms of the vote of their elected official in Congress.

Yes, ma'am?

Q Congressman Reynolds today called their victory, or your loss, demoralizing for the Democrats. And he said it was a black eye for you, Madame Leader, and he said it also hurt your credibility. Can you respond to that?

REP. PELOSI: I usually don't respond down -- (laughs) -- but nonetheless I did put my credbility on the line in terms of the election of John Kerry. I'm still stunned at that defeat. Quite frankly I thought that John Kerry would be the next president of the United States.

In terms of the races for the House, I always said, on any given day I thought that the opportunity was there for us to take back the House and on that day we would. It wasn't there on Election Day.

I think that in another meeting of this kind we'll get more specific about the races, and after-action review, as we say in the military, would show that the Republicans were absolutely ruthless in how they took apart any challengers from day one, and that their misrepresentation of the facts was such that some of those challengers who had not had experience as legislators, mayors, elected officials or, you know, in the combat of politics may have been surprised by the ruthlessness of the Republican attack. We should never, ever be surprised by that again. But I don't consider it a black eye. I think we held our own on what wasn't a very good day for the Democrats.

Anybody who wants to talk to us about morale, if you have that much energy to keep up with us-our morale-keep coming to our meetings, because we are ready for this lame duck, we're ready for the next session, and we're ready for the next election.

Q This is the sixth election cycle for House Republicans where they've had a majority. Is there a certain permanence that's starting to set in for House Republicans? And where do you go to look for these seats that get you to 218? Where are they?

REP. PELOSI: Well, if you look at the races-and Bob, you may want to speak to that-but --

REP. MATSUI: No.

REP. PELOSI: If you look to the races that are up now and people who got 55 percent or below among the Republicans, you'll see a large number -- 20-some seats who are Republicans are below 55 percent, which is considered not a good place to be if you're an incumbent. I certainly would never want to be there. And most of the-two to one those seats are Republican seats, A. B, again, the spotlight is on them. They have all three houses-the two houses and the White House. They have to produce, and their votes will be well known to the public because they've made certain representations.

So quite frankly, I think the table is set for us in the next election. I welcome the fray. I look forward to conveying to the public what the differences are between the Democrats and the Republicans here. And many people thought that this would be a one- two punch, and that is what it will be. But we have lost just about everything that we can lose.

The other opportunity may spring from a redistricting in the state of Texas because, as you know, the court may revisit that issue. If they do, we'll be ready. If they don't, we'll take our resources elsewhere. But we will not have to defend as many incumbents in a difficult part of the country.

Now you have to remember that in Texas not only was there an illegal-illegal basis for the redistricting in terms of corruption, but also in terms of violations of the Voting Rights Act. It was also a state where the president of the United States was seeking reelection. So you couldn't have had a better scenario for the Republicans. If the courts overturn that, it'll be a better scenario for us. As I say, if they don't, we'll have plenty of opportunity elsewhere, but we won't have to allocate so many resources in red states getting redder, be they Texas or other places in the South, in a presidential year.

You know what the --

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