Pelosi Remarks at Press Availability Following Democratic Caucus Meeting Today

WASHINGTON, March 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a brief press availability this afternoon following a Democratic Caucus meeting. Below is a transcript of the press availability.

Speaker Pelosi. I didn't realize there were so many of you who were gathered here. We had votes, so I was waiting for some of the other Members of the leadership to come back, but since you're all waiting here, why don't we begin?

I'm very pleased that we had a very productive meeting with the White House, with Nancy-Ann DeParle, the President's adviser on health care, where she walked through the President's proposal. Members had the opportunity to ask questions about it, express some of their priorities — public option, public option, public option — as you can imagine. And, again, another step taking us closer to voting on quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

It was, in the context of our, now still waiting — final words, although we have some information, but final word from the Congressional Budget Office — A. B—we were briefed by the Rules Committee as to the action they need to take to put the reconciliation bill on the table. And they can't do that, of course, until we have a final number from the CBO. It's important — what was emphasized over and over again, and the presentation by the Rules Committee emphasized, the fact that the reconciliation bill will not be about health care reform, health insurance reform, in its totality, it will be only about the changes that will be made to the Senate bill. And those reflect the President's proposal, which honor many of the requests we had in the House.

To remind, 75 percent of the House and Senate bills are similar. The President says 90 percent — so let's split the difference. In that, the Senate bill was passed by 60 votes in the Senate and in the House our bill was passed by 220 votes. We will now be addressing just the changes. And you've heard me say it over and over: they will relate for affordability to the middle class, where we believe the House bill was better, accountability of the insurance companies where we believe the House bill was better, closing the donut hole — and I'm learning that some of you young people don't know exactly what that means or maybe I should explain that for seniors this makes purchasing prescription drugs more affordable — and equity for the states — correcting the Nebraska agreement fix, whatever you want to call that, but having more equity for the states. And this is really important because we don't want to have unnecessary burdens on the state and this legislation comes closer to what the House had in mind on that score.

In addition to that, that's with the investments — on the pay-for side, as you know, again and again, we talked about the so-called "Cadillac plans." And Nancy-Ann discussed with the Members, Nancy-Ann DeParle, with the Members what the change would be and that is that 80 percent of it would be removed from the bill and that's a real victory for the House. And she discussed further how that is represented in the bill and what is used instead as a pay-for, which is a Medicare tax on unearned income for the bulk of it.

So it was very productive in terms of hearing directly from the White House what the President's proposal was at a time when we have a better idea of what CBO is talking about, although not final. And having the Administration hear the concerns of Members once again, in case there's any room within reconciliation.

But again, and I'll close with this, reconciliation is a very narrow discipline. And that was emphasized to the Members this morning. Unless a provision is central to the budget, it cannot be considered. And again, we have to abide by our Parliamentarian, and the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Parliamentarian, the Byrd Rule, all of this was discussed this morning.

We'll come back this afternoon to go over some others, but this was a very valuable presentation by the White House and it helped me a lot because when I go the table and express the concerns of my Members — my limitations prevent me from giving the full enthusiasm for certain ideas that our Members have. But they made it very clear how interested they were in certain provisions that now appear in the President's bill — others they'd like to see. If we cannot do them under reconciliation, then it would be something that they want to see acted upon in other legislation.

So again, I wish the other Members were here because I think it was very productive, the attendance was great and that's always good, and the interaction was lively and positive and takes us closer to passing health care for all Americans.

Yes, sir?

Q: Madam Speaker, I was wondering how confident are you that you will be able to pass something by March 18th and what is your message to those Democrats that right now are undecided?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, March 18th is an interesting date. As I say, our clock starts ticking when we get the final CBO report. We don't have the final yet, but have a pretty good idea of where we are going on it. Our Members, as I said to them this morning, we will have at least one week to have our own conversations about — at least — it may take longer and we will take up the bill when we're ready to take up the bill.

But it is not something that we want to drag out because the decisions are made. The choice has to be made. And as I am talking to Members, it is, obviously we all believe that the status quo is unaffordable. We all believe that America's families, that is unaffordable for families, for individuals, for businesses, for our economy and also for the federal budget. So we understand that from a cost standpoint, we can't afford the status quo—A. B—as a matter of values for our country, and this is not necessarily in order of priority, Senator Kennedy said, "This is not just about provisions of the bill, it's about the character of our country." And the fact that we want all Americans to have access to quality, affordable health care is a value to us that our caucus shares, and so they want to move forward with the bill.

So when you ask "What is the message?" obviously we share vision, the question is what are some of the individual concerns. And my message to them is individually addressing the concerns that they have about cost, affordability, and that. And I took pretty extensive notes from the first round of this bill, so I have a pretty good idea of what some of the Members who first voted yes, but had some hesitation about cost, well that has been addressed in the bill. Or those who didn't vote with us but were looking for some more cost measures. The Senate bill is stronger in terms of the savings in the out years, and that is helpful to us.

So it is, the general message, the vision that we share, that is the easy part. That takes us, that gives us an opportunity. We have to Member by Member address the concerns that they raised.    

Q: Madam Speaker, you said you had most of the information from CBO that you [inaudible.] Can you run down for us how those changes, top line numbers like the cost and the savings and any sort of…

Speaker Pelosi. Well, we have a pretty tough top line but we also have goals that we want to achieve. I would not be at liberty to share any of that with you because, as you know, the CBO is very constraining in putting information in the public domain. But I don't think it will be too long before we will have that information. At least that is my hope, if we are going to be able to move, because I don't think the American people can wait much longer as to whether we are going to have health care reform or not.

But you will be the first to know.

Q: Speaker Pelosi, can I ask a question about the earmark announcement yesterday? On earmarks, was there any pressure to take a tougher stance on earmarks especially for earmarks given the recent ethics investigation into PMA and the links between campaign contributions and earmarks?

Speaker Pelosi. No, this earmark discussion has been an ongoing one for us. And I think you probably know, and if you haven't you have to see what we were just, I've been talking to a couple of Members about the, what we have done on the earmark situation. We have had significant reductions by nearly half, cut that down the number of earmarks by half, unprecedented transparency—it is all up on the Internet—requiring Members' earmarks, again to be publicly disclosed, not just our disclosing them but their disclosing it. Earmarks designated for profit must compete, that is what we did last year. But we decided to go further this year—no earmarks for profit entities and a one-year moratorium. We put in a one-year moratorium in 2007.

So no, it didn't have anything to do with that. It just had to do with the time of the year, the beginning. Members are making their requests for earmarks, and we thought it would be important to let them know that they probably should not make a request for an earmark for a business.

That doesn't mean that we don't respect some of what they have done because most of the earmarks, probably the business earmarks, probably 99.99 percent of them are in the defense bill. Many of them come from the Department of Defense that want certain small businesses to get an earmark because it is entrepreneurial, it is a fresh thing, but they can't get it in the budget. These companies can't compete with the big defense contractors, so they come to us to say, "Can you get this in?" What we are going to do instead is have an innovation account at DoD, where the small businesses can come to compete for a contract, if that is what it is. But we have strict guidelines as to the fact that it has to be that entrepreneurial, something fresh and new that they don't have to compete with the biggies.

You know, I spend a lot of time on national security issues and how we meet the needs of protecting the American people, and you divide some of these things, when we are talking about the entrepreneurial spirit, into needs and leads. We have needs and we go out there and say to people: "Who can do this best?" They give us leads, they are saying, you may not have thought of this but here is some new ideas that we are bringing forward. This is in that realm of innovation which we think is a better way to go than what we have now. The first part of your question, some people are pleased, some people want, you know we have a range of opinion on earmarks within the Caucus.

SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House