“Opportunity Is In Season”: Pelosi Ready To Push Obama’s Plans Forward
Apr 6, 2009 11 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Genuine AP photo, no photoshop
WASHINGTON — Opportunity is in season, and when Congress reconvenes in two weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to start harvesting.
In a little more than two months, a new president has challenged a generation’s worth of notions about government’s proper scope, a divided Congress has approved unprecedented spending, hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost jobs, and an unsteady world has plumbed the depths of recession.
Bold action cannot wait, Pelosi said in an exclusive interview with the Tribune-Review in her Capitol office Friday.
Revitalizing the economy and health care and energy plans — including efforts to sharply cut carbon emissions — will top Congress’ to-do list, said Pelosi, D-Calif.
The plans are sure to spark bitter partisan battles and again lay bare the country’s ideological divides. President Obama’s election in November, however, signaled the nation’s call for change, Pelosi said, and both parties are compelled to answer.
“We’ve all failed if we cannot deliver for the American people,” Pelosi said.
Momentum for health care reform peaked late last year before the economic collapse overwhelmed all other issues. Too much was promised to allow the moment to slip away, Pelosi said.
“There are no excuses that are possible on the health care issue,” Pelosi said. Lowering health care costs will make businesses more competitive and will cut the federal debt by reducing Medicare and Medicaid costs, she said.
The fiercest debate likely will surround whether to create a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, something Pelosi supports, she said.
“I see that as the biggest obstacle,” Pelosi said.
Opponents fear a public plan will usher in government-run health care.
“I think it’s a straw horse for a single-payer system,” said Michael Tanner, health care scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute.
He estimated 118 million people — about two-thirds of those privately insured — would join a public plan. As the public plan grew, it would lower premiums, attracting more people.
“It’s a death spiral for private insurers,” Tanner said. “Republicans oppose this. The insurance industry opposes this. The business community is going to oppose this. It quickly becomes a pretty bloody fight.”
Pelosi acknowledged the evolutionary possibility, saying a bill mandating single-payer health care “is not going to happen.”
The debate could add fuel to opponents’ claims that Democrats are undermining free enterprise. Such claims resurfaced last week when Obama forced General Motors CEO Rick Waggoner to resign as part of a plan to save the struggling automaker.
“I am not shedding a tear over Mr. Waggoner’s departure,” Pelosi said during a roundtable with reporters before the interview. “How they could not foresee that they had to compete is beyond me. … I don’t know how these people have lasted so long.”
Saving the automobile industry — and the technological and manufacturing capability it provides — is a national security imperative, she said. But the government’s interest ends with preservation, Pelosi said.
“We don’t want to be running businesses,” Pelosi told the Trib.
Republicans say that would happen with a public health insurance plan.
“A public option will destroy private health-care options,” Kevin Smith, spokesman for House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, said in an e-mail.
Republicans can block House bills by filibustering in the Senate, where even a unanimous Democratic bloc is two votes shy of being able to force the issue through. To get around that, Pelosi has proposed using a legislative maneuver called reconciliation. It’s the same process used to pass budgets, which cannot be filibustered — and it’s a last resort, Pelosi said.
“We have to find our common ground. We have a responsibility to do that. If we can’t, we have to stand our ground,” Pelosi said. “We’re not starting with reconciliation. We have it in as an option. I hope it’s not necessary.
“They used it at the drop of a hat,” Pelosi said of Republicans, who, when they controlled Congress, used the process to pass bills Democrats opposed, such as Bush’s tax cuts. “It’s a way to get the job done.”
But it carries a price. Republicans can vote as one against Democratic measures, and they did against the February stimulus and Thursday’s $3.55 trillion budget. If the measures don’t work, Republicans can say they tried to stop it.
The argument is emerging.
“The speaker just passed the most profligate budget in history that doubles our debt in five years and (triples) our debt in 10 years,” Smith said. “She can’t duck responsibility anymore. She and her fellow Democrats own the problem.”
Pelosi counters that the deficit is a holdover from the Bush administration.
“These are the people who drove up the biggest deficit in history,” Pelosi said. “You have to give them credit for the gall to even make the suggestion.”
Still, she said, GOP opposition is based on principle. She just disagrees with the principle.
“It’s what they believe. They do not believe in government,” Pelosi said. “They do not believe in regulation, they do not believe in supervision, they do not believe in discipline and, when walls came tumbling down, they did not believe in intervention.
“I give them more credit than most people do. But they’re wrong.”
Finding common ground, however, will be necessary to a successful reformation of the country’s energy infrastructure, Pelosi said. Congress will take up pollution control legislation, including Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal, this year, she said.
“Coal pollutes the environment. There’s just no question about it,” Pelosi said.
That’s about the only part of the debate that’s settled, Pelosi said.
She promised the final law would be a compromise — among liberals, conservatives, coal companies, the United Mine Workers of America and others — because the results will quickly spread from Capitol Hill into homes across the United States.
“You can’t do this unless you have consensus — even if you have the votes,” Pelosi said.
Higher costs to coal producers mean higher prices for power companies, and power companies will increase utility bills, Pelosi said. Operating costs also would increase for domestic steel producers, heavy coal users who already work under stricter standards than many foreign competitors, she said.
“We can’t go forward unless we make the (utility) rate-payer whole and mitigate … the cost to production,” Pelosi said during the roundtable.
It will be a season of battles, but one she said Democrats are best-positioned to fight now.
“The forces of the status quo are mighty, and they have deep pockets,” Pelosi said. “They will wait you out.”
Trib political reporter Salena Zito contributed to this story.
