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Nancy Pelosi: No entitlement cuts
At a televised news conference Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she opposes cuts to entitlement programs as part of a debt deal, but left some room for compromise on changes to key programs.
Fresh off a White House meeting Friday morning with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Pelosi said if any savings were culled from programs including Medicare and Medicaid as part of a “global grand plan” in the debt ceiling talks, that money should stay within those programs.
“If the purpose is to strengthen Medicare, then let’s make sure that money goes to Medicare, not to deficit reduction,” Pelosi told reporters Friday.
The House’s top Democrat has said Social Security shouldn’t be brought up in the context of deficit reduction, telling reporters earlier this week that “if there is a table that Social Security is on, it’s on its own table.
On Friday, she acknowledged that her caucus had concerns about the talk of cuts to the entitlement programs, saying “high tension wires go up” whenever such discussions are floated.
Pelosi said she was “still optimistic” a deal can be reached, striking a more upbeat tone then Speaker John Boehner, who said earlier that day that there is no agreement imminent and that the two sides were still far from a consensus.
The next round of the bipartisan, bicameral meetings at the White House is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday.
Sources: C-Span, Meet The Press, MSNBC, Politico
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