Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi Puts The Kibosh On GOP Payroll Tax Cut Strategy

Brian Beutler | December 2, 2011, 5:15PM

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says Republicans can forget about using the looming expiration of a year-long payroll tax holiday for workers to squeeze a host of unrelated conservative priorities through Congress, and projected confidently that her party has the GOP cornered on the issue.

In an exclusive interview Friday with TPM, Pelosi sketched out the Democrats' strategy for renewing (and possibly expanding) the payroll tax cut, which most economists say would promote job creation next year -- when persistent unemployment will be at the center of the election debate.

"It is really a stalling tactic," Pelosi said of recent reports that Republicans want to use the lapsing tax cut as leverage to pass key GOP priorities, including construction of a major oil pipeline from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, and rolling back Obama's health care law. "It's unworthy of the needs of the American people for them to go all around the mulberry bush with this stuff. If they want to do something for the American people -- to remove the uncertainty as to whether these payroll tax cuts will be extended, whether [unemployment insurance] will be extended ... let's just get about doing it."

"They know that this stuff isn't going to fly, that the President's not going to sign it -- so why are they doing this," Pelosi says. "It's about votes at the end of the day, and some of their people are never going to vote for anything, so they're going to need our votes, we're going to have to work together, and they're going to need the President's signature -- and they're going to need it to pass the Senate."

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Health Care

House To Hold Test Vote On Health Care Repeal Today

Brian Beutler | January 7, 2011, 9:37AM

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

The Republican-led House of Representatives today will hold a key test vote on its top priority: repealing the new health care law.

The up-or-down vote will set the terms of the debate on the repeal bill itself, which is scheduled to hit the floor (and pass) on Wednesday. During that debate, Democrats will be unable to introduce their own amendments and have been closed out of the process more generally. An earlier plan to force committee-level votes on popular elements of the bill was scuttled earlier this week.

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House Democratic Whip Race

High Profile Dems Back Hoyer In Whip Race

Brian Beutler | November 7, 2010, 4:52PM

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Thirty House Democrats from across the political spectrum have signed on to a letter supporting Steny Hoyer in his race against Jim Clyburn to be Minority Whip next Congress.

We are writing to encourage you to join us in supporting Steny Hoyer as our next House Democratic Whip. We know that this is a trying time for our country and our party-but the first step in standing up for the middle-class and winning back the House majority is electing a strong leadership team to unify our Caucus. Majority Leader Hoyer has been an essential part of our Caucus's leadership in the 111th Congress, and we need his leadership in the days ahead.

You can read the entire letter below. Included among its signatories are John Dingell -- the "Dean" of the House -- respected progressive Jerrold Nadler, Blue Dogs like Larry Kissell and Jason Altmire, and Silvestre Reyes, an influential member of the Hispanic caucus.

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Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi To Run For Minority Leader

Brian Beutler | November 5, 2010, 1:05PM

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi just announced that she's running for House Minority Leader.

Pelosi broke the news on Twitter, "Driven by the urgency of creating jobs & protecting #hcr, #wsr, Social Security & Medicare, I am running for Dem Leader."

(#hcr stands for health care reform, #wsr stands for Wall Street reform.)

You can read her letter to colleagues announcing her intention here.

For the last three days, gaming out whether Pelosi would make this call has become a favorite parlor game in Washington.

Starting yesterday, sources close to her floated the possibility of a run as a trial balloon, and she herself acknowledged that she was weighing the possibility. Just this morning, numerous Democratic aides gamed out what would factor into her decision.

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Nancy Pelosi

The Next Gingrich? How Democrats Could Win, And Pelosi Still Lose

Brian Beutler | October 21, 2010, 11:48AM

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

A small but growing number of Democrats have abandoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- the GOP's second-favorite bogeyman in contested districts. Depending on how you count, about five have even said they oppose her continued Speakership if the Democrats retain the House.

That may sound like no big deal -- who cares if some of the most conservative Democrats in the House won't vote for Pelosi, so long as a majority of her caucus still supports her, right? Wrong.

The Speaker is a unique office-holder on Capitol Hill, elected by a plurality of the full House of Representatives. Even if Democrats can retain the House, their margin will likely be slimmer than it is now. And that could touch off a scenario in which there's a majority of Democrats in Congress, but a minority of members of Congress willing to vote for Pelosi as Speaker.

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Nancy Pelosi

Top Five Examples Of Dems Running Scared From Nancy Pelosi (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | October 1, 2010, 12:35PM

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

It's too early to predict the outcome of the 2010 elections, but one thing we know for sure: If Democrats lose their majority in the House, Nancy Pelosi will not be Speaker anymore. That's certainly one of the reasons that she doesn't bat an eye (publicly, at least) when vulnerable and conservative Democrats run from her on the campaign trail.

"Sometimes Washington gets used to a rubber-stamp Congress which was the very homogeneous Congress of the Republicans," Pelosi said on PBS last night. "We are very diverse in opinion, gender, generation, geography, philosophy and the rest -- the House Democratic Caucus -- and some members did not vote for some the bills and that's their record and that's what they go out and say. I just want them to win."

But these candidates are not just running against their records. They're singling out Pelosi as the agent in Washington with whom they disagree with the most. Below, a list of the five most blatant examples of Democrats running scared from Pelosi.

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Health Care

Five Conservative Dems Campaigning On Opposition To Health Care Reform

Eric Kleefeld | August 30, 2010, 8:57AM

Demonstrators rally outside of the U.S. Capitol Building.

An interesting pattern has started to emerge in this midterm election, which could be dominated by the continuing debate over the health care reform law passed earlier this year. A whole bunch of Dems from Republican-leaning districts have been running ads in which they tout their opposition to the bill.

So let's take a look at some of these conservative Dems. Will their votes against the bill -- and their public campaigning on those votes -- actually work for them in November?

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Joe Lieberman

Nobody's Showing Up To Joe Lieberman's TEA Party

Brian Beutler | May 7, 2010, 12:38PM

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

It's probably a safe bet that if House Republican Leader John Boehner backs away from a conservative, terrorism-related bill called "TEA," the legislation both goes too far, and isn't going anywhere.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) captured big headlines, and interesting supporters, when he proposed the Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would amend current law to allow the State Department to revoke the citizenship of Americans they deem to be members of foreign terrorist organizations. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) joined his push. So did House Democrat Jason Altmire, who hails from a competitive district in Pennsylvania.

But that's about all she wrote.

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Health Care

Altmire Will Stay A 'No' On Health Care

Rachel Slajda | March 19, 2010, 4:49PM

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) will again vote against health care reform, he announced in a statement this afternoon.

"I regret that this year-long process of debating health care reform has resulted in a final product that I cannot support," he said. "The cost of inaction on health care is great, but it would be an even bigger mistake to pass a bill that could compound the problem of skyrocketing health care costs."

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Health Care

Slaughter House Rules: The Truth About The Democrats' Plan To Pass Health Care

Brian Beutler | March 16, 2010, 5:20PM

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH); inset: Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

In their latest attempt to derail health care reform, conservatives are attacking the Democrats' preferred procedural strategy for passing the legislation. The GOP is trying to put Democratic leaders on the defensive about using what's known as a self-executing rule to push health reform through, with House Minority Leader John Boehner dubbing it, "the ultimate in Washington power grabs."

The issue, as I alluded to in this post, is Democrats' tentative decision to use a rule that would allow them to pass both the Senate health care bill and the reconciliation fix with a single vote. Republicans have dubbed this the "Slaughter Solution," and described it as an unprecedented maneuver that will allow Democrats to enact reform without casting a vote on it. The reality is that this maneuver (known more technically as a "self executing rule") has a long history, and has been used more frequently by Republicans than by Democrats.

That doesn't mean every Democrat is on board. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)--a crucial swing vote on health care reform, told me and a handful of other reporters this afternoon that he disapproves of the "Byzantine" maneuver.

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Mary Beth Buchanan

Former U.S. Attorney-Turned-Congressional Candidate, To Talk Radio Host: I Could Sue You For Defamation

Eric Kleefeld | February 18, 2010, 5:42PM

Mary Beth Buchanan

Mary Beth Buchanan, a former Bush-era U.S. Attorney who is now running for Congress in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire, may need to work on how she handles criticism of her tenure in office. Buchanan called into the radio show of local talker Marty Griffin, and apparently threatened him with a defamation suit.

Griffin had just hosted Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist, former Allegheny County Coroner, and prominent Pittsburgh-area Democrat, who had been prosecuted for alleged corruption by Buchanan. Democrats had accused Buchanan of launching a political prosecution -- the announcement of the charges had come close to the 2006 election, and became a data point in the U.S. Attorney scandals of late 2006 and early 2007. The charges were ultimately dropped.

During his interview, Wecht alleged that the case had cost $20 million to prosecute. Buchanan called in to take serious exception to this, saying that it could have only been $500,000 at most -- and told Griffin that he better get his facts right. "And you know, we still have defamation laws in this country. And to the extent that you keep repeating things are flat-out wrong, you're running afoul. That case could not have cost the government more than $500,000, and that's on the outside."

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