At a Medicaid Day of Action press briefing, Speaker Emerita Pelosi was asked if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) should remain the Senate Democratic Leader after his CR vote.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm here for on top of the envelope.
00:03You mentioned getting the message out to the red districts,
00:07but very few Republican congressmen and women
00:10are having town hall meetings in their districts.
00:13They were told not to.
00:16So what is your plan to get that out there?
00:18And also, second part of the question for Senator Schumer,
00:21Speaker America, do you still have faith in Senator Schumer
00:25to lead the Democratic caucus in the Senate?
00:28Well, we're focusing on this subject
00:30now, if you'll hold that for later.
00:34No, everybody has friends in another district.
00:38We're telling them to call your friends,
00:40call your family members who live in those districts
00:43to have them call their members.
00:45Don't you, I've said to our constituents
00:48at our press conferences when we've had the town meetings
00:52or the tele-town meetings, you're wonderful,
00:55but it isn't helpful for you to call a Republican member.
00:59You have to have somebody in that person's district
01:02call a Republican member.
01:04I consider my constituents my bosses.
01:07I hope that they do, too.
01:09What was your question?
01:10Yes.
01:10Do you still have confidence in Senator Schumer
01:14to lead the Democratic caucus in the Senate?
01:16Both for you and Senator Schumer.
01:17I do.
01:17I do.
01:21To quote, and I guess this gets to your question
01:24and the previous question as well, to quote the Speaker,
01:27and Speaker, forgive me if I get the quote wrong in part,
01:32the Speaker always says that our diversity is our strength,
01:36but our unity is our power.
01:39We were not unified last week.
01:42And as we're the minority in the House
01:44and we're the minority in the Senate,
01:46the only way we're going to be able to stop bad things
01:48from happening is if we're unified.
01:50So we're going to have to do a lot better the next time
01:54a key issue like this comes up.
01:59I'm not going to opine on the sort of internal caucus
02:02politics as a freshman.
02:03I'm going to leave that to more experienced people.
02:06But I think the Speaker's words really ring true to me.
02:09We're going to have to figure out
02:11a way where leadership in the House
02:13and leadership in the Senate is on the same page.
02:15And we're clearly communicating a unifying message
02:21about the harms this administration is doing
02:24and is causing.
02:25What do you think needs to happen next time
02:26so there aren't those decisions?
02:30We both have the same question.
02:33Well, I'm concerned about the next.
02:35I'm concerned about the future.
02:37What happened last week was last week.
02:39We're going into the future.
02:41And this morning, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer
02:45joined in this kind of an event in New York
02:50where Hakeem said that he had confidence in Chuck Schumer.
02:55So we're to the next stage on this now.
02:58But your question and yours, it is about what comes next.
03:02I myself don't give away anything for nothing.
03:07I think that's what happened the other day.
03:10We could have, in my view, perhaps
03:13gotten them to agree to a third way, which
03:15was a bipartisan CR for four weeks, in which we could
03:21have had bipartisan legislation to go forward.
03:25I'm an appropriator.
03:28Mr. Schiff is an appropriator with the Appropriations
03:31Committee.
03:32They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public
03:35would have seen they're not agreeing to it.
03:39And then they would have been shutting government down.
03:42Because we don't want government to shut down.
03:44And by the way, just from a historical standpoint,
03:47in modern times, all of the shutdowns
03:50had been precipitated by the Republicans.
03:52Newt Gingrich in the 90s was Clinton.
03:56Clinton didn't shut it down, but Newt Gingrich
03:59insisted on shutting it down when he was president.
04:03Boehner, when Obama was president,
04:05he insisted on shutting government down,
04:07Speaker Boehner.
04:10The president of the United States
04:12going out the door, the longest shutdown in history,
04:17was it 35 days or whatever it was, it was his.
04:20And he said he was really proud.
04:22He was really proud to shut government down.
04:25So shutting government down is a Republican initiative.
04:29It has been consistently.
04:32We haven't.
04:32That isn't who we are.
04:34So we weren't going to be shutting government down.
04:36We just wanted to have another path to make
04:39sure we could keep it open.
04:41Or if it didn't stay open, that people knew why.
04:45That was Trump.
04:46The 35 days was Trump.
04:47What did I say?
04:48You didn't.
04:49Make sure they know.
04:52All right.
04:53I don't like to use his name.
04:56What's his name?
04:57I said, I guess.
04:59I was in a room when Chuck and I were negotiating with him
05:02on this.
05:03And he said, I'll shut it down.
05:04I'll be proud to.
05:05And he did for a long period of time.
05:09And we took the majority.
05:10We went in a few days later and took the majority.
05:13But it took a while for us to get him to sign anything.
05:17So in any event, it is, again, it's about the budget.
05:23It's about the budget.
05:24It's about the statement of values
05:26of who we are as a country.
05:28They talk about fiscal responsibility.
05:30I invite any of you to join in on this.
05:33Fiscal responsibility.
05:34They gave up tax cuts on the richest people in America.
05:37Over 87% of it going to the top 1%.
05:41And it added $2 trillion to the national debt.
05:46Unpaid for.
05:47Unpaid for.
05:48$2 trillion to the national debt.
05:50And now they want to do it again, double.
05:53Do you want to speak to that?
05:54No, I do.
05:55The chair of the desk.
05:56I do.
05:57I do.
05:58I do.
05:59I do.
06:00I do.