This is the first woman who I’ve seen so openly and unabashedly speak out of both sides of her face at once on TV, yet not blink an eye, as if she’s proud of it.
Here are a couple of portions from the transcript:
WALLACE: In the weeks after the election, there was a lot of talk about all sides coming together in the economic crisis to get a stimulus package on the president’s desk by Inauguration Day.
Now that has slipped to mid-February. There’s more and more talk about an old politics party-line vote. Whatever happened to the new bipartisan spirit under Barack Obama?
PELOSI: Well, what you say is one interpretation. I see it quite differently.
WALLACE: Well, I mean, we just had this vote on the TARP, the…
PELOSI: Right.
WALLACE: … and it only got six Republican votes in the Senate.
PELOSI: Well, it’s amazing, because they had voted for it in much more — in stronger numbers when President Bush was president.
WALLACE: So what happened to the bipartisan spirit?
WALLACE: Mr. Obama has not committed on whether to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year or just to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010.
PELOSI: Right.
WALLACE: You say you want to do it now. Is it…
PELOSI: Well, I say now, but I — what we’re saying is that’s not part of this discussion for…
WALLACE: I understand that, but…
PELOSI: … this economic package.
WALLACE: … my point is this: Isn’t it a mistake to raise taxes on anyone during a recession?
PELOSI: Well, first of all, I don’t know that a decision has been made by the Obama administration.
But I will tell you this, that in ’04, ’06 and ’08, we had campaigned in saying what the Republican Congressional Budget Office told us. Nothing contributed more to the budget deficit than the tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America.
Fiscal discipline is central to what we do, and we can’t…
WALLACE: You’re about to pass a $1 trillion spending program. That’s not — that’s not fiscal discipline.
PELOSI: No, no. It is discipline.
WALLACE: You want to do this in the middle of a recession?
PELOSI: First of all, we are not proposing a $1 trillion…
WALLACE: Stimulus.
PELOSI: It’s eight hundred and a quarter…
WALLACE: OK.
[snip]
WALLACE: So you agree union card check later rather than sooner, and maybe not taking away the secret ballot?
PELOSI: Well, I believe that — I know that President-elect Obama is a strong supporter of America’s workers. I myself am a strong supporter of that legislation. We passed it with a strong vote in the House in the last Congress, and I continue to be supportive of it.
But in terms of what we have to do in the first 100 days, we must address the needs of this country. Five hundred million people will lose their jobs each month until we have an economic package.
WALLACE: No, 500,000.
PELOSI: What did I say, million?
WALLACE: Yes, 500 million. That would really be a recession.
PELOSI: Oh, no. Excuse me. Thank you for correcting me.
WALLACE: Yes.
PELOSI: It feels like 500 million. Five hundred thousand Americans will lose their jobs each month until we have a recovery package.
That’s why I said we will have this package by Presidents’ Day recess, and if we don’t have it signed into law by then, we will not have a recess.
[snip]
WALLACE: Mr. Obama says that he’s not particularly interested in investigating whatever went on in the past with the Bush anti-terror programs.
You’ve got John Conyers, head of your Judiciary Committee, who wants to set up a commission to do exactly that.
PELOSI: Right.
WALLACE: Mr. Obama says that at this point we’ve got to be looking forward, not backward.
PELOSI: I think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of the — for example, the Justice Department, to go unreviewed. Past is prologue. We learn from it.
And my views on the subject — I don’t think that Mr. Obama and Mr. Conyers are that far apart. I think that…
WALLACE: But you want to see investigations.
PELOSI: Well, I want to see — I want to see the truth come forth. Now, how that is done — I’m really not completely familiar with what Mr. Conyers is putting forth or the…
WALLACE: But on the Justice Department and the politicization of that, on…
PELOSI: Well, I think that’s a matter of — that’s not up to us to say that doesn’t matter anymore. I think they’re different subjects, and you treat the differently.
We have a contempt of Congress against members of the executive branch who withheld information from us on that subject, and that was reinforced the first day of this new Congress.
So I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law, and do we even have a right to ignore it, and other things that are — maybe time spent better looking to the future rather than to the past.
[snip]
Pelosi also said that the Bush tax cuts were, without a doubt (to her), the largest contributor to our current national debt. I can assure you, Nancy, that is not the case. Do some checking on your stats, please.






