House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed Thursday that Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing a coronavirus relief bill that puts “workers first.”
But Pelosi has been accused of stuffing the legislation with a multitude of proposals that do not directly have to do with the COVID-19 pandemic. (RELATED: Pelosi’s Coronavirus Bill Pushes Provisions Unrelated To The Crisis)
The Senate passed a $2 trillion dollar stimulus bill late Wednesday. The House is set to vote on stimulus legislation Friday.
“We did jujitsu on it,” Pelosi told reporters during her regular news conference.
“It went from a corporate first proposal that the Republicans put forth in the Senate to a workers first — Democratic workers first —legislation,” said Pelosi. “The bill that was passed in the Senate last night [Wednesday] and that we will take up tomorrow [Friday] is about mitigation: mitigation for all the loss that we have in our economy while still addressing the emergency health needs that we have in our country.”
The Speaker said that Democrats in the House and Senate were able to completely overturn Republican designs to make the legislation all about corporations.
“We take some pride in the fact that, as I said earlier, congressional Democrats in the Senate and in the House were able to flip this over from corporate trickle-down Republican version to bubble-up worker first, family first legislation,” she claimed. (RELATED: Biden: ‘My Green Deal’ Could Be Part Of ‘Next Round’ Of Coronavirus Assistance)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) look on at a press conference with DACA recipients to discuss the Supreme Court case involving Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) at the U.S. Capitol on November 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Pelosi suggested now that Democrats have succeeded in addressing “emergency mitigation,” it was time to move on to “recovery in terms of where we go to grow the economy [and] create more jobs.”
“So right now we have the legislation that will come to the floor tomorrow [Friday],” she said. “I anticipate and feel certain we’ll have a strong bipartisan vote.”
Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, like others in the Republican party, lambasted Democratic efforts to include diversity and climate change measures in the Senate bill, recently saying, “reality calls and Congress is hanging up.”