Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she did not believe that Democrats’ major losses in the 2010 elections were because of Democratic votes for Obamacare, blaming them instead on TARP.
In 2010, Republicans picked up 63 House seats, gaining the majority and taking control of the House. The losses are usually blamed on the vote for the unpopular Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law earlier that year. Pelosi argued at a press conference Wednesday that she did not believe that to be the case.
“I don’t even buy into the idea that we lost the election because of healthcare,” she said. “One of the most damaging votes that our members had to take was the TARP, 700 plus billion dollars to bail out Wall Street in the view of the public. We didn’t see it that way. We saw it as rescuing our economy from a financial services meltdown.”
“People never even got over that vote,” she argued of TARP. “It really in some ways gave birth to the tea party. Because they did not like what they viewed as the Wall Street bailout. And certainly the Occupy [Movement], who have a good more in common than they may know. But that was really the vote that sort of soured people. They didn’t like that vote at all. And they judged many other things in light of” it.
“I think that was probably the toughest vote members had to take,” she said.