‘Get Out of Here’: Pelosi Scolds Reporter Asking Her Whether Saying that Reconciliation Means End of Her Time in Congress
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) scolded a reporter on Thursday after he asked her if she said that the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation package addressing welfare and climate change being, as the House Speaker put it, the “culmination of my service in Congress” means that she will retire from Congress.
During a press conference during what is a hectic day on Capitol Hill – Congress seeking to avoid a government shutdown after midnight on Friday, trying to raise the debt ceiling amid Republican opposition, and the House of Representatives trying to pass a Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday despite progressive Democrats threatening to sink it in the narrowly controlled Democratic chamber – Pelosi said that the reconciliation bill is “a culmination of my service in Congress because it was about the children. The children, the children, the children.”
“Their health. It’s about health. Education. The economic security of their families. A clean, safe environment in which they could thrive,” she continued. “And a world at peace in which they could succeed. This is more about the domestic first four parts of that. So removal of doubt in anyone’s mind that we will not have a reconciliation. We will have a reconciliation bill.”
Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman asked Pelosi, “You said this is the culmination of your time in Congress. Are you trying to — culmination means the end of an experience.”
“Get out of here,” said Pelosi. “Get out of here.”
“You said it, not me,” replied Sherman.
“Yeah, no, but of course, the Affordable Care Act was remarkable and I take some proprietary interest on this,” said Pelosi. “But in terms of finally seeing a time where we can think in a large way about our children, our people with disabilities, our moms.”
Pelosi continued:
I mean, I’m a mom with five children. When I was young and was raising my children, people don’t know, this is a challenging job. Even one child or two. I didn’t even wash my face some days. In fact, I liked it that way, but the fact is, is that we have to – if we’re going to be really building back better, we have to give women the opportunity to work in the workplace, and that’s about childcare, home health care, universal pre-K. Family medical leave. And like that. In other countries, most developed countries have that. We don’t. We will. And that is – each one of those is something we fought over the years for. And now it’s coming together in a way that is transformative. Not incremental but transformative to what we’re doing on the infrastructure side of things. They go together very well.
Pelosi then shifted to talking about climate change legislation, citing the 2007 energy bill signed by then-President George W. Bush. At the time, Pelosi was House Speaker, the first woman in that position.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
