Politics

Pelosi: Obama ‘one of the most practically non-partisan presidents’

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that President Obama is “one of the most practically non-partisan presidents” that she has ever seen in her career and that he “really is working” to forge a budget agreement.

“Here’s the thing — the president is one of the most practically non-partisan presidents I have seen in the White House. I’ve been there since Ronald Reagan, and he really is working to try to get some bipartisan agreement. They’ve been working very hard to try to get the Senate consensus or some agreement on how we can avoid a shutdown of government but also how you can even remove all doubt that we’re not going to honor the full faith in credit of the United States of America by lifting the debt ceiling,” Pelosi said Friday in an interview with the USA Today editorial board.

“There are some glimmers, a possibility of coming to a grand bargain. The president is talking about a grand bargain for middle-income jobs, but the bigger, the grander the bargain the more you can accommodate, shall we say, other things you don’t like so much. But weighing all the equities, this is the way that we need to go forward,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi also said in the interview that government spending will help reduce the deficit, and offered a curious response to a question about the Obama administration’s delay of Obamacare’s unpopular employer mandate.

“The president didn’t postpone the mandate. He postponed the penalties for not engaging in the mandate,” Pelosi said.

“The administration’s recent announcement to delay the onerous and unpopular employer mandate until after the 2014 election… confirms what has been obvious from the start — this law is a colossal mistake,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz recently said. Cruz and other Republicans, disagreeing strongly with Pelosi’s characterization of Obama as “practically non-partisan,” are currently engaged in an effort to block all continuing-resolution budget bills until Obamacare is defunded.

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