WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said President Obama has been “so respectful” toward Republicans and dedicated “so much time” to negotiate with them on deficit reduction.
Pelosi was asked if Obama’s lack of outreach to Republican leaders in Congress was the reason a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction was never reached.
“This president has been so respectful, given so much time to the Republicans and their views, to the point that at one time, in one of our meetings, I said to the president, ‘Mr. President, I’m busy, and I don’t have any more time for this; you have to be the busiest person in the world; if and when they come up with a new idea, why don’t we just call you back into the room,’ because he has tried so hard to listen, to accommodate, to be respectful of their points of view,” Pelosi said on Thursday at the Capitol.
“No, I do not think this is why we didn’t reach a grand bargain. I think we didn’t reach a grand bargain because the speaker of the House walked away from an agreement that he and the president had arrived at, probably because he couldn’t sell it to his own caucus. And I don’t care what anybody else says about that.”
In the last several days, Obama has dramatically shifted his mostly confrontational strategy and has scheduled multiple meetings with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Obama dines with GOP, asks for $600 billion in new taxes