House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited some journalists, including me, to a chat about the issues President Obama will address in the State of the Union Message tonight. If Obama is as feisty as Pelosi was this afternoon advocating for health care and other elements of the Democratic agenda, he could restore some of that confidence in his leadership that's been lost through a year of wheeling and dealing.
Pelosi said everything is a "heavy lift" in Congress these days, but if the gate is closed, you climb over the fence, and if the fence is too high, you pole vault over it─and if that doesn't work, you parachute in. "You can always find a way," she said, laying out the route to get a health-care bill through reconciliation (which she calls "majority vote") that we wrote about on Friday.
On the proposed domestic discretionary spending freeze, she doesn't think defense spending, and specifically defense contractors, should be spared the knife. She's all for doing what's necessary for the troops, and for the national defense, but if Title I for Children funding in impoverished neighborhoods comes under the freeze, she thinks defense contractors should get the same scrutiny.
As a former state party chair in California, Pelosi prides herself on her cold-blooded analysis of an election. She sums up the Massachusetts results as "unrest about spending," and says the voters have forgotten that the Dems are the ones who are cleaning up after a very large elephant and that they have to do a better job conveying their message to voters, beginning with tonight's speech. "It's like a marriage," she said. "If you think you're communicating, and your wife doesn't think so, then you're not communicating."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
