Thread: Nancy Pelosi - Health care reform is going to happen!!!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighs in on the stimulus, bipartisanship, war and the CIA briefings controversy.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., became speaker of the House — the first woman to do so — in 2007.

She now leads the chamber at a time when Democrats also control the Senate and the White House. Pelosi is helping to steer an ambitious agenda that includes health care reform, energy legislation and economic stimulus. Her tenure as speaker has not been without controversy, including her recent assertion that the CIA misled Congress about interrogation techniques.

Pelosi sat down with USA TODAY's editorial board on Tuesday to discuss these and other issues. Her comments were edited for length and clarity:

Question:Those who witnessed the health care reform effort in 1993 and '94 feel like we've seen this movie before. A young Democratic president with a Democratic Congress offers a sweeping overhaul. It is attacked as being overly complex, socialistic, government-run medicine, and the whole thing collapses. Will the sequel have a different ending?

Answer: It definitely will. First of all, the American people have a sense of urgency about health care. If nothing is done now, health care for them will increase in cost. There are two words that should describe what we're trying to do: lower cost. Lower cost for the families, lower cost for businesses so they can be more competitive, lower cost for our economy so health care doesn't take such a big chunk, and lower cost for our budget because health care reform is entitlement reform. We have to take that spiral down or otherwise, it's endless in terms of growing the deficit. So, lower cost.


Q: I imagine that some of our readers will see the House bill's trillion dollar price tag and hear about raising taxes on the affluent, and they're going to say, "That doesn't sound like lower cost to me."

A: We should be able to squeeze as much as we possibly can out of the current system. If it's a trillion dollars, over half of that has to come from savings and then half from a revenue stream, a co-pay, something else. When you say taxing the wealthy, you have to see what you're comparing it to. What is the choice that is to be made? The Senate started out by saying they were going to have to tax people's health insurance benefits. That is a tax largely on the middle class.

So where do you go get that much money? Well, at the high end, which has been enjoying quite a fiesta the last eight years in terms of tax cuts in the Bush administration. If the Senate comes up with a potpourri of further cuts or other sources of revenue that don't hurt the middle class, then that's something we should all be looking at. But this (reform) is going to happen. And those who oppose it are mainly just opposed to health care.

Q: At a crucial point in the 1993-94 health care debate, Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey said he would not vote for a bill that did not have Republican support. With something this comprehensive, can you sell it to the country as the right plan without Republican support?

A: Yes, we would certainly like to have bipartisan support. But understand that we have differences of opinion as to the role of government, and in public policy, as it relates to health care. If there are ways that Republicans want to participate, that's fine. By and large, the Republicans (in the House) don't believe in doing that, the government role. Now, perhaps in the Senate, they will be able to come to some agreement. This is one of those things where everything is on the table.

(Photo by Truth Leem, USA TODAY)

Q: The economic stimulus bill sent a lot of money out the door, but it is not working as well as was promised. Why not?

A: This was always a two-year bill. It always was thought to be something that, in the second half of this year, would have its fuller impact in terms of job creation and getting the money out. It takes time. But we're still optimistic that millions of jobs will be saved or created. I'm not inclined to support a second (stimulus) because we haven't seen the full impact of the first recovery package. It will happen. As I say, it's a time-release thing.

Q: Could the first stimulus be accelerated?

A: I'd be interested in that, to see if there's some way that it can be accelerated. Again, that relates to how government does its work.

Q: Democrats retook the majority in Congress in 2007, and partisan tensions still rule the day. Why can't this cycle be broken?

A: We worked with President Bush on the energy bill, which did pass. We had our differences of opinion on the farm bill, but we passed a farm bill. I supported President Bush's initiative, which I did not love, on the first stimulus package. The president would not have had the dreaded TARP (bank bailout) legislation without the Democrats; the Republicans were simply not voting for it. So on some of the major issues that the president needed done, Republicans weren't there for him. But we were.

Q: And when Democrats came into power?

A: President Obama has been completely committed to bipartisanship. What I think he's finding out, but what we hope to change, is that there is not a shared value when it comes to expanding health care for Americans, that there wasn't any interest in reversing climate change and reducing our dependence on foreign oil and on fossil fuels. But I think that as we go along, we have a responsibility to strive for finding our common ground. If we don't have it, though, we have to stand our ground.

Q: In a May 18 news conference about the CIA briefings, you acknowledged that in 2002 and 2003 you were aware that waterboarding was considered, and then later found out that it was being used. Yet you left the impression that you were powerless to effect a change.

A: First of all, I was not briefed that waterboarding was being used. I know that there's confusion about that. They told us that there were those in the administration who thought it was legal.

Q: But you learned in February 2003 that it had been used.

A: No. I learned that the intelligence committee had been briefed further on the use of some techniques. Not necessarily waterboarding. But I was no longer the chairman of that committee and, as leader, my question was, "Was the correct action taken?" Yes, it was. But what can you do about it? Provide for the common defense. This is our first responsibility. Intelligence is a very important part of that. If the executive branch, which is the custodian of intelligence, but not the owner, refuses to be truthful with the Congress, refuses to meet, then something is wrong with this picture. You can't honor your oversight responsibility, you can't appropriate tens of billions of dollars if you're not being told what the law requires you to be told.

Q: If you learned today, for instance, that waterboarding had resumed, what could you do?

A: Well, under the Bush administration, which is where I was in this position, you couldn't do anything. That's why I said, "We had to change who was in charge there." You also need to expand the number of people who get briefed. Because Congress cannot say that we have oversight if we don't have the information.

Q: The country's involved in two wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. You opposed the surge in Iraq. You supported the deadline for combat troop withdrawals by the end of August 2008. Were you on the wrong side of history?

A: No, I completely think that the Bush initiation of hostilities into Iraq and the conduct of the war are great mistakes. I used to call it a blunder, but a blunder sounds almost like it wasn't purposeful. Mistake.

Q: Are we sliding into a quagmire in Afghanistan, and do we have enough troops?

A: The fact is, after 9/11 until this new president came in, we really had no major initiative in Afghanistan. It's a tragedy. It was a missed opportunity for years. And now we have to do something about it.

I don't know that there's a will in the United States to send 300,000 troops to Afghanistan. And that's what some have suggested. You may not know this, but in Congress, one of the hardest votes I had this year wasn't stimulus. It wasn't the budget. It wasn't the energy bill. It was the supplemental (spending bill) for Iraq and Afghanistan. The appetite has just gone out.

And yet, that is the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is the place where the terrorists sprang from. That is where they have safe harbor. That's where we need to be to deal with it. But, again, there isn't a big appetite — public appetite — for that. So that's why getting out of Iraq was very, very important.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/07/ ... ppen-.html

So where do you go get that much money? Well, at the high end, which has been enjoying quite a fiesta the last eight years in terms of tax cuts in the Bush administration.





Oh here we go again.....another slap at the Bush administration.

Well, let me remind Madame Hypocrite of something:

SHE was one of those at the "high end" enjoying the "fiesta" of tax cuts compliments of Bush. Her and the rest of them.

So, before she goes throwing that out there, she just might want to stop and think about it before she goes sticking her foot in her mouth any further than she has already.


She must've not gotten the obamemo wherein he stated that from now on this was going to be about his administration and not continuing to lay blame on the past administration and the Republicans

moving to other topic's, no illegal aliens in this article!