Fighting Back: – Nancy Pelosi: “The White House Doesn’t Come with Training Wheels”

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Found on the Internets …

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi marked the first 100 days of the Trump administration with a press release “The White House Doesn’t Come with Training Wheels”

This week, as we approach the 100th day of his presidency, President Trump proved once again that he’s out of his depth in the White House. The unpredictable bluster and bravado that was a defining characteristic of Trump in the private sector becomes embarrassing and dangerous for the country when deployed by the President in the Oval Office.

Case in point: this week alone, Trump and his Administration:

– Promised and then walked back a promise to pull out of NAFTA, which would have threatened U.S. jobs.
– Promised and then failed (again) to pass Trumpcare, which would have driven up costs and kicked millions off of health care.
– Promised a tax reform plan, delivered a one-page Word doc that promised tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while doing almost nothing for the middle class.
– Delivered the weakest job growth in 3 years.
– Defended his hiring of General Flynn, who is being investigated for his ties to Russia.
– Announced during a Reuters interview the U.S. and North Korea might have a “major, major conflict.”
– Declared the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), a five-year old free trade agreement between the US and South Korea that began under President George W. Bush, might be terminated.
– Declared the South Korean government should pay the U.S. for an anti-missile system currently being installed to protect against attacks from North Korea which Trump valued at $1 billion.
– “Joked” to UN Security Council Ambassadors, all men, that if they didn’t like Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, he could replace her.
– Defended leaving hundreds and hundreds of senior-level agency positions vacant, crippling the government, because “we don’t need so many people coming to work.”

It, therefore, comes as no surprise that President Trump didn’t understand being the leader of the free world would be a difficult, demanding job until this week: “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

The first 100 days of the Trump Administration have been marked by consistent missteps, falsehoods, and broken promise after broken promise – and without a single major legislative accomplishment. Instead of working to help promote growth, stability and security in the U.S. and across the globe, the Trump Administration has lurched from crisis to crisis with no coherent agenda to improve the lives of everyday Americans. This government by chaos is hurting workers and their families and dimming the beacon of hope and democracy the US represents in the world’s eye.

The Weekly Democratic Party Address, delivered by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is below.

Weekly Democratic Party Address

Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat from Hawaii, delivered the Weekly Democratic Party Address:

“This week marked the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency and it was unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. From the nominations of unqualified cabinet secretaries like Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt, to the failed attempt at banning Muslim refugees from our country, this administration and this Congress have governed with cruelty and have broken every promise they made to the American people.”
– Senator Brian Schatz (HI)

(A full transcript will be added if one becomes available)

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Leader Nancy Pelosi’s weekly news conference from Thursday:

Transcript: Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference

Leader Pelosi. Welcome, children [here for Take Your Children to Work Day]. We always do what we do here in recognition of our responsibility to our children. As you know, Washington is a place so dedicated to honoring our Founders, and you see monuments and statues throughout the city and throughout the Capitol complex to that end, and we do revere our Founders and are grateful for their leadership and their vision.

But what we do here, which is part of our Founders’ vision, is to work for the future. So you are our inspiration, you are our purpose. So thank you for being here today and for being a constant inspiration as to what our purpose is and our responsibility to our children.

Our Founders predicated their optimism on the fact that every generation would take responsibility to make the future better for the next generation. So honoring the vows of our Founders and committed to the aspiration of our children, I welcome you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming.

And maybe we’ll break some rules today by having some questions from the kids, but we’re going to have our own press opportunity upstairs later.

So I know that you may be interested, in addition to the fact that this is Bring Your Children to Work Day, that negotiations continue on the omnibus package. We are committed to keeping government open. Our major concerns in the negotiation have been about funding for the wall and uncertainty about the CSR payment, crucial to the stability of the marketplaces in the Affordable Care Act. We have made some progress in both of those areas.

More progress, though, needs to be made on some of our priorities. And we continue to be concerned about the poison pills, riders that are still in the legislation, including those that undermine a woman’s right to comprehensive health care, undermine Dodd‑Frank’s protections for American consumers, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and overall in the fiduciary rule, which undermines the commitment that we have to investors, especially seniors, so that the person advising them is operating in their interest.

So these are all rules that, again, are not in the interest of protecting consumer and individual rights that we are fighting.

As you all know, Saturday is a big day, the 100th day of the Trump administration, 100 days of broken promises to working people, 100 days of handouts to the wealthiest people in our country.

All this week, House and Senate Democrats have been leading daily actions highlighting the stark reality of President Trump’s conduct. Some people have asked me what grade I would give him. We could take it subject by subject.

Broken promises on jobs and infrastructure, F. We haven’t seen a jobs bill. We haven’t seen an infrastructure bill for all the talk. F. Broken promises on America’s health care, F minus, because that truly ‑‑ well, I’ll go more into that later as to why F minus.

Broken promises to drain the swamp, stacking the deck in his Cabinet with lobbyists. He said he was going to fire Wall Street, and yet, again, he’s hired them into his Cabinet against the interest of the public, dismantling net neutrality that will chill competition, hurt consumers, and punish entrepreneurs; destroy the openness and dynamism of the internet.

Everyplace you look you will see something that undermines openness, transparency, consumer rights. And everyplace you look you will see, whether it’s the health care, a tax bill, or whatever it is, something that extracts money from the middle class to the wealthiest people.

Broken promises to working families. So drain the swamp, F, too, yeah. Broken promises to working families and promises kept to the wealthy few. That’s what he has done. It’s everyplace.

Attacking clean air, clean water for our children. He said we’re going to have clean air and clean water, and what does he do, undermine the EPA. Unleashing Wall Street, dismantling Americans’ privacy on the internet, as I mentioned, undermining American values.

So we were very pleased Monday, we were on the phone with some of you, [Democratic Leader] Chuck Schumer and I and [Democratic National Committee] Chairman Perez, talking about the overarching Promises Made, Promises Broken. Each day we’ve had – Jobs Tuesday, Health Care Wednesday. Today, as we speak, maybe it’s still going on, Draining the Swamp, led from our side by Elijah Cummings. And then tomorrow, I hope you’ll join us, Chuck [Schumer] and I, on the broken promises to working families.

Democrats believe that every day we must be about job creation for everyone, everywhere in our country. But Republicans have spent the first 100 days trying to weaken working families and even put more money in the pockets of the wealthiest people in our country.

So yesterday was the big day for the tax plan. Did you see it? Here it is, the tax plan, one page. But I must say, the first third of the page is grow the economy and create jobs. I mean, it’s like descriptions, but not provisions. Thank God it’s small, because every word of it is about tax breaks for the high end, trickle‑down economics.

There’s room for bipartisan tax reform. We’ve said this over and over. We stand ready to come together for simplification, for fairness, to come together to lower the corporate rate, if that gets corporations to pay their taxes. So lower the corporate rate, to go forward in a way.

When our Members go to the table to discuss this, they have no instruction from me. They know the values of our Caucus. The only thing I say to them is put growth at the middle of the table, economic growth to create good‑paying jobs. Wherever the suggestions come, be agnostic. From the right, from the left, wherever they come from, if they grow the economy, create good‑paying jobs, and reduce the deficit, we’re there.

But instead the Republicans are focusing on – the President, instead of focusing on hardworking families, his tax outline is a wish list for billionaires. Trickle down all over again, and guess who it’s trickling all over?

In 2005 alone, the only year that we have the President’s tax information – get this – the President’s plan would have changed his – he would have paid $30 million less. In that year he paid, whatever his taxes were, this proposal he’s putting forth would have reduced his tax bill by $30 million. He would be paying $5 million instead of $35 million.

The scant handful of specifics overwhelmingly cut taxes for the richest, do little for the middle class and those trying to aspire to the middle class, and could explode the deficit – are you ready for this – $5.5 trillion. Tax breaks to the rich, same‑old, same‑old, warmed‑over stew of trickle‑down economics, all to the advantage of the high end at the expense of working families and to increase the deficit $5.5 trillion. It doesn’t meet any of the standards I talked about earlier, that it creates growth, good‑paying jobs, and reduces the deficit.

America cannot afford another Republican tax plan that hands billions of dollars in tax breaks to the richest on the backs of the middle class.

I said earlier I’d get back to the health care, F‑minus, health care plan. The same billionaire‑first agenda drives America’s health bill, raises America’s health costs, deductibles, and out‑of‑pockets, while handing a $600 billion tax break to the richest people in our country; again, an extraction of wealth from the middle class on up.

TrumpCare, again, means higher cost, 24 million people losing health coverage, gutting key protections, a crushing age tax for those 50 to 64, and stealing from Medicare.

And this week, to make matters worse, the Republicans unveiled their plan to make TrumpCare even more cruel and more costly. House Republicans’ latest version of TrumpCare means heart‑stopping premium increases for Americans with anything from asthma to cancer, the whole list of diagnoses.

Gutting essential health benefits and protections for pre‑existing conditions, giving the states the right to withhold coverage for pre‑existing conditions. And if they were to get them, they would be so astronomically expensive. And it would enable insurance companies to charge whatever they wanted for them, if they could even get the health coverage that loved ones so desperately need.

The monstrous immorality, as I call the TrumpCare, is perfectly encapsulated in the House Republicans’ early attempt. Can you believe this, that they put out a bill the other day that exempted Members of Congress’ own health coverage from the damage that it would do to everyone else, which in the face of public outrage they’re now backing off of. But the nerve that they would have.

They still have in the bill that insurance company executives can make more money. We had limitation on what they could deduct for the CEO pay, and they, in this bill, give a bigger break to the executives of the health insurance industry and at the same time exempt Members of Congress from the nastiness of their own bill.

But, again, public sentiment is everything, thank you, Abraham Lincoln, the public outrage on this. Now I think they’re trying to make a change to the bill. Lord knows how many more changes they will make to the bill.

What you see in the GOP haste to pass the bill and Trump trying to cram it down in the last 100 days, I think President Trump is really making fools of the Members of Congress of his own party. He’s asking them to vote for a bill that is wildly unpopular in the country, is the wrong thing to do, first and foremost, is going to be doo‑doo stuck to their shoe for a long time to come, and with terrible consequences to the American people.

So with that, I’d be pleased to take any questions you may have.

Press questioning followed (see transcript)

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