Pelosi says House has votes to pass healthcare bill, rates her own job performance

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on ABC News’ ‘This Week’ that she had the votes in the House to pass a final healthcare bill regardless of remaining differences. And when asked how she would rate herself over the last year, she said she’d allow herself an ‘A’ for effort.

She suggested that the Senate’s grade would have to be given ‘on a curve.’’ Any final evaluation, the speaker added, would come on election day. ‘The grade is given on election day,’’ Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday. ‘We’re fully prepared to face the American people with the integrity of what we have put forth, the commitment to jobs and healthcare and education and a world at peace and safe for our children and with the political armed power to go with it to win those elections.

Pelosi addressed the ethics problem that her Ways and Means Committee chairman faced, with the House ethics committee having found that Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) ran afoul of House rules in accepting corporate sponsorships for trips to Caribbean conferences.

‘The fact is, what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good. It was a violation of the rules of the House,’’ Pelosi said of an ongoing inquiry into Rangel’s failure to immediately disclose large sources of income. ‘It was not something that jeopardized our country in any way, so it remains to be seen what the rest of the work of the committee is. I hope it will be soon. But again, it’s independent and they go at their own pace.’

Pelosi said this about the ‘tea party’: ‘The Republican Party directs a lot of what the tea party does, but not everybody in the tea party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, Astroturf, as opposed to grassroots.

‘But, we share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as it just has to stop,’’ the speaker maintained. ‘That’s why I’ve fought the special interest, whether it’s on energy, whether it’s on health insurance, whether it’s on pharmaceuticals and the rest.’

Asked to rate her own performance during the past year, Pelosi said: ‘I think I get an A for effort. And in the House of Representatives, my mark is the mark of our members. We have passed every piece of legislation that is part of the Obama agenda.’

Obama famously has given himself a ‘solid B-plus,’’ with the option to reassess that pending the outcome of the healthcare drive. As for the Senate, Pelosi said, ‘Let’s grade this all on a curve.’’

-- Mark Silva