Pelosi: Revenues Must Be on Table

Posted October 30, 2013 at 12:55pm

President Barack Obama may be willing to accept a deal that replaces part of the sequester without revenue, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dismissed the idea Wednesday.

“Our position is, we’re going to to the table in order to reduce the deficit, grow the economy, create jobs, end the sequester,” the California Democrat said at a weekly briefing with reporters. “Revenue needs to be on the table.

“You can’t just take a piece here, a piece there. It has to be comprehensive, and if you’re not going to have revenue, who is going to pay? Granny on Medicare?” she asked. “That’s not something that we can accept.”

The White House has not closed the door on a short-term deal that replaces part of the sequester without revenue.

Pelosi was asked to take a stance on the issue in response to a Wall Street Journal article that cited Obama as open to precluding new revenues from a final budget package “if it came to a very narrow deal to replace part of the sequester cuts.” The article relied on White House officials’ retelling of a meeting earlier this month between Obama and Senate Republicans.

“I didn’t hear him say that,” Pelosi said sharply when told of the Journal’s report. “Where do they reference that?”

The article reported that at the meeting, Obama “acknowledged that congressional Democrats might not agree” to a budget deal sans revenues.

For now, at least, it appears he was correct in that suspicion.