Nancy Pelosi touts party victories in press conference: ‘I take pride in what we have in the House bill’

Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference Thursday morning to tout her party’s victories and ridicule the Senate Republicans on an emergency stimulus bill that the Democrats blocked twice over the past week. 

“We take some pride in the fact that Congressional Democrats in the Senate and the House were able to flip this over from the corporate, trickle-down Republican version to a bubble-up, workers first, families first legislation.”

The $2 trillion stimulus package was intended to be passed in the Senate over the weekend and was negotiated with bipartisan support. Pelosi instead chose to go against the bill and draft her own counterproposal, which was full of ‘liberal provisions’ unrelated to the coronavirus.

Though, in her press conference today, she stated, “Let us work together in the most bipartisan way possible to get the job done as soon as possible.”

According to Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) in an article by the National Review, Pelosi’s bill introduced on Monday was full of “a ton of crap that has absolutely nothing to do with the public health emergency that we face at this moment.”

The new bill, which passed in the Senate late Wednesday night by a unanimous vote of 96-0, will move to a House vote on Friday.

Some, though not all, of the provisions under Pelosi’s proposed bill have been removed, including early voting, ballot harvesting, federal agency requirements for the usage of minority banks, and curbing airline carbon emissions, according to Fox News.

The current package allocates $25 million for “salary and expenses” to the Democratic-controlled House. It also includes $25 million to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – a 29% cut from Pelosi’s previous proposal. 

According to Fox News, the current package includes:

• $1,200 to adults making up to $75,000 a year and $2,400 to married couples making up to $150,000, with $500 per child
• $250 billion in extended unemployment insurance, with lengthened duration of 39 weeks and an extra $600 a week for four months
• $25 billion to airlines for workers’ “salaries and benefits,” plus up to $25 billion more in loan guarantees and loans
• $349 billion in loans, and $200 billion in tax assistance, to small businesses

In her press conference today, Pelosi stated, “There’s so many things we didn’t get in any of these bills yet in a way that we need to.”

PHOTO CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite