This is what I wrote a couple of days ago about the DNC Winter Meeting.  I’m posting it here less for you to read and more to remind myself to post writeups here so this awesome tumblr address doesn’t go to waste.  Also, I find it odd that tumblr thinks the word tumblr is misspelled.

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On Day Two of the DNC Winter Meeting in Washington, DC, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was introduced by a gushing Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) who remarked on her “brilliance” and “legislative know how.”  “Our own Nancy Pelosi,” Honda said, “the most powerful speaker.”

Speaker Pelosi began by addressing the jobs numbers that came out this morning.  “And a good morning it is as was indicated by the jobs numbers this morning.”  Before coming back to the issues of jobs, she would touch on the support the democrats in COngress have given to veterans.  She then tied this to discrimination bringing up the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the first six minutes of the speech when she said,  “Last week, happily receieved the news that President Obama will repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

There was no more specifically said about that, but quoted Truman when she said “The Democratic Party is the people’s party and the Republican party is the party of special interest.”  This gave her an opportunity to get in a little dig on the Supereme Court’s campaign finance decision and “insist that we pass public financing of campaigns.”

But what she came to the DNC to really talk about was, economic recovery, jobs (big surprise) and health care.

On the topic of jobs, Pelosi spun today’s numbers in the most favorable of light by comparing the situation to last year.

“January of last year, before we enacted the recovery act.  Americans lost 741,000 jobs… One year later… 22,000 jobs.”

She continued, “22,000 jobs lost is too much.  We know we have to do better.  But it’s a big difference.”

Her spin on it, we’re doing better than a year ago.  But while she was talking, Minority Leader Boehner put out his spin on the latest jobs numbers:

“Today’s report confirms that the U.S. economy has lost nearly 3.3 million jobs since President Obama signed the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ into law.  Washington Democrats promised that the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ would create jobs ‘immediately’, keep the unemployment rate from going above eight percent and that 90 percent of the jobs created would be private-sector jobs. None of that has occurred.”

Next up on Pelosi’s speech agenda was health care.

She invoked Kennedy as an inspiration when she assured the crowd that “We will pass health insurance reform this year.” She then hyped the legislation we’ll be hearing about constantly for the next few weeks, the Perriello-Markey Bill to end the anti-trust protection of health insurance companies.  This would be step one in making incremental changes to the health care insurance industry, and forgoing the idea of a big health care bill making it’s way to the President’s desk.

She wrapped up her speech taking aim at the Republicans by aligning them with former President Bush  (“Rehashing the same failed Bush policies”) and cautioning against their alternative to the Presidenti’s budget.   “The Republican budget that they presented to the House earlier this week privatizes social security, turns Medicare into a voucher program,” said Pelosi.  Though Minority Leader Boehner said during one newser this week that there was no effort to privatize Social Security.

Tomorrow, the DNC assures us, that the impending “snowpocalypse” will not stop the President from speaking at the Winter Meeting.

Speaker Pelosi pledged to go forward with health care reform, but her newser this morning suggested that there was not a clear plan on how to do this.  She was fittingly interrupted by the tolling of a clock in the room, making it audibly clear that she was short on time when it came to health care.   Even if she kept repeating that they are not in a rush. 

The Speaker almost completely ruled out the idea of the House passing the Senate-version of the health care bill. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.”

The press tried to get as much clarification as possible. “Unease would be a gentle word” to describe the attitudes of the speakers colleagues about multiple previsions of the Senate bill. “There are certain things that members just can not support.  For example the Nebraska piece of it.”  She also pointed out that there’s “always been unrest in our caucus about the excise tax on so-called ‘Cadillac benefits,’ just to name a few.”

“So in it’s present form without any change I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” continued Pelosi.

However the Speaker was adamant that “We have to get a bill passed.  That’s a predicate that we all subscribe too.”  Passing the Senate bill and fixing it later presents fundamental problems for some of the democratic caucus members.  She related this to the Massachusetts special election by saying that some of the “concerns that were expressed in Mass, were about some of the provisions of the Senate bill.”

The Speaker seemed to put the idea of “just taking pieces of the bill” and figuring out how to pass those on the table.

There was an effort to move the conversation to the President’s agenda of job growth.  “The jobs issue has permeated everything, major initiative that we have.  Of course our last action here in the house was to pass a jobs bill before we had adjourned…It’s always been about jobs and deficit reduction.”  She continued that they may not have been clear enough about the connection between the creation of jobs and deficit reduction. 

While she said that they are not in a rush, the State of the Union looms large. 
“we’ll take the time it needs to consider the option again

When asked about her reaction to Sen-Elect Brown winning in Massachusetts she said, “The idea that at any given time the Senate would have 60 votes is not what we would call the most iron clad assumption… We always prepared for what if they don’t.”  She continued, “We’ve always though what if?… We were not without our preparation.” 

That may have been a hint at using reconciliation to pass some type of health care measure, but she wasn’t clear what the path was.