SAN FRANCISCO — Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi provided a pointy critique of Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer on Tuesday, suggesting he had forfeited an important bargaining chip by permitting a vote on Republicans’ authorities funding invoice.
“I personally do not give away something for nothing,” Pelosi instructed reporters throughout a information convention at a youngsters’s hospital in San Francisco. “I feel that is what occurred the opposite day.”
Pelosi — who spoke throughout an occasion to oppose Home Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid — stated she nonetheless helps Schumer, her longtime ally who’s come underneath hearth from inside his personal social gathering in current days over his choice to permit the GOP’s invoice to avert a authorities shutdown by means of final Friday.
However Pelosi, in response to a query, recommended that if Schumer hadn’t cleared the best way, it might have given Democrats extra leverage to combat proposed cuts to Medicaid and different social safety-net applications.
“We may have, for my part, maybe, gotten them to comply with a 3rd manner,” Pelosi stated. She stated a possible end result may have been a bipartisan persevering with decision to delay a shutdown for as much as 4 weeks whereas negotiations continued.
She added, “They could not have agreed to it, however no less than the general public would have seen they don’t seem to be agreeing to it — and that then they’d have been shutting (the) authorities down.”
It’s the second time in per week that Pelosi has criticized Schumer over his dealing with of the funding invoice. On Friday, she recommended his transfer had performed right into a “false selection” that President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk had provided Congress: shutdown the federal government or give them a “clean test” to slash authorities spending.
Pelosi additionally praised Home Democrats and Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries, her successor, for refusing to help Republicans’ stopgap spending measure, regardless of blowback from Trump’s administration and GOP leaders, who accused Democrats of risking a shutdown for political causes.
Tensions between Schumer and Jeffries blew up final week after the Senate Democrat bucked his social gathering’s transfer within the Home. However the two have performed good in current days, and Jeffries stated Tuesday that he helps Schumer’s management.
Later Tuesday Pelosi famous her and Jeffries’ shared confidence in Schumer — and she or he was fast to counsel Democrats are poised to recapture the Home within the midterm 2026 elections amid a “drumbeat” of protests over proposed cuts to Medicaid and different public applications.
“What occurred final week was final week,” Pelosi stated. “We’re going into the long run.”
