Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered platitudes and a healthy dose of hypocrisy about the Democratic Party’s current leadership and Republicans, respectively, during a Saturday appearance on PBS, joining NewsHour co-anchor and co-managing editor Geoff Bennett from the Reframe Festival in San Francisco.
“The budget that the president put out that we just are reviewing now is one that is really a shame,” Pelosi said, taking a verbal potshot at President Donald Trump.
“A budget should be a statement of our national values. What is important to us as a nation should be reflected in that budget. It should be a budget of investing in our future for our children and the rest. And if you review the budget that the President put forth, he cuts education. Nothing brings more money to the Treasury than the education of the American people. Early childhood, K-12, higher education, post-grad, lifetime learning for our workers,” Pelosi continued.
“The best dollar you can spend in the federal budget, I do believe, is basic biomedical research. The biblical power to cure, to save lives, to save funds for families who are confronted with illness and the rest. The list goes on and on. And why? Because he says he has to cut so that he can be fiscally sound—at the same time as he’s giving enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country,” she added.
Trump and Republicans are working to make permanent tax cuts that were passed early in his first term. They don’t go to “the wealthiest,” but affect more than 87 percent of all U.S. workers. In addition, the current tax cut plan includes a Trump pledge not to require income taxes on tips and some government benefits, among others.
Also, Republicans have been seeking to cut Education Department spending for decades, especially as public education was taken over by left-wing teachers’ unions and as scores and performance among students nationwide cratered.
Pelosi then discussed party leadership and when Democrats should confront Republicans and the Trump administration.
“You have to prioritize carefully and make the distinction so the American people can see what impact this has on their lives—carefully prioritizing and at the same time show the narrative, again, with some specific issues, show the narrative thematically of what he is doing to our country,” she said. “So again, we always have this debate: whether we go for opportunity, security, all of those things, or specific pieces of legislation—we do both.
“But this isn’t about me. This is about our new leadership. It’s about our courageous members of the House. We would have never had those bills without their courage. And too bad that the public — when somebody doesn’t get a message, it’s not—it’s not because of them,” she added.
“It’s because of us who are delivering the message that we did not deliver it clearly enough, especially since everything we did was for working families, to lower the cost for them of health care and housing, you name it,” she said.
Pelosi’s claims that prices are not coming down under Trump are false.
“Inflation eased more than expected to a five-month low in March as gasoline and used car prices tumbled and rent increases softened further,” USA Today reported that month.
“Inflation was notably cooler than expected in March: The overall Consumer Price Index dropped as energy prices plummeted, while the core measure that excludes food and energy rose just slightly,” Axios noted.
“U.S. inflation declined last month as the cost of gas, airline fares, and hotel rooms fell, a sign that price growth was cooling even as President Donald Trump ramped up his tariff threats,” the AP reported.
Adding the WSJ: “Consumer prices declined month-over-month in March for the first time in nearly five years, a welcome development for inflation-weary consumers…”