House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed on Thursday to hold more press conferences as she and President Bush gear up for legislative showdowns over appropriations bills, the war in Iraq and the expansion of a children’s healthcare program.
{mosads}Pelosi had not met with reporters by herself in weeks, but she promised more frequent meetings to challenge Bush and push back against polls giving Congress dismal approval ratings.
“I have been very busy passing bills,” Pelosi told reporters who gathered in her ceremonial office on the Capitol’s second floor.
“This has been a heavy lift,” she added, referring to efforts to pass the legislative items that were part of her “Six for ’06” agenda.
Asked whether she would meet weekly with reporters, as former Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) did, Pelosi jokingly responded, “It might be every day. Are you ready for that?”
It was a brief moment of levity in 20 minutes of questioning related to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which is set to expire on Sept. 30.
Bush and Pelosi held their respective press conferences to discuss SCHIP hours apart on Thursday. House and Senate negotiators have reached a tentative deal to expand coverage to 10 million children, which would increase the program’s cost by $35 billion over five years. Bush’s proposal would cover 6.6 million children and cost an additional $5 billion.
Bush accused Democrats of “putting poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington” and asked Democrats to send him a “clean” bill.
She called his veto threat “ a poor choice,” adding, “What the president is asking for is to cover fewer children. I don’t know what the point of an extension is.”
Bush also used the opportunity to attack Democrats for failing to condemn MoveOn.org’s advertisement, which ran last week in The New York Times and referred to Army Gen. David Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”
Democrats “are more afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org … than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal,” Bush said.
Pelosi indirectly responded to Bush, saying, “How can I be as generous as I can to the president of the United States to characterize members of Congress that way?”