Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, is defending a book she claims says that Reps. Alexandria OcasioCortez (Rep.) and Pramila Jayapal were “queen bees” of the left last ye as they opposed the bipartisan Infrastructure bill.
Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi (D-Calif.), stated that “House Democrats have made historic advances for the American people under the Speaker’s leadership and are united by the common goal of addressing the needs hardworking families.” Fox News Digital was informed.
Hammill stated that “many books will be written on the challenges of legislating in the face of the pandemic, as well as a period of unprecedented Republican obstruction. We won’t be commenting about works that substitute gossip with fact.”
Punchbowl News Friday published an excerpt from “This Will not Pass” by Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns. The statement was strongly worded. The excerpt says that Pelosi said to a senior lawmaker that Democrats had alienated Asians and Hispanic immigrants by their loose talk about socialism.
“In some of these same communities, the Italian Catholic speaker stated that Democrats hadn’t been careful enough about how they spoke about abortion among devout Americans of faith.” The Punchbowl excerpt from “This Will Not Pass” continued. “She said to another House Democrat Pramila Jayapal, and Ocasio Cortez that they were vying for the title of ‘queen bee’ on the left. However, their reward might be serving as the House minority’s representative after the next election.
Pelosi did not specifically state that the “This Will Never Pass” reporting was false in her statement.
Last year, Pelosi faced the most challenging legislative task of her career when President Biden and progressives proposed a $3 trillion reconciliation bill. Both the moderates and progressives of both parties praised a bipartisan bill on infrastructure that they wanted to pass.
Pelosi initially agreed with progressives in summer 2021 that Congress should not pass an infrastructure bill before the reconciliation bill, “Build Back better”, was signed by Biden. They were met with resistance from moderate Democrats, who wanted the infrastructure bill to be decoupled from Build back Better. The reconciliation bill should also be substantially cheaper than the progressives’.
Pelosi eventually decided that the House should proceed with infrastructure work even before the reconciliation bill. This was because the House Democrats’ narrow margins threatened both House Democrats and Pelosi. However, she was repeatedly obstructed by progressives who fought together to block the bill on infrastructure until they achieved satisfactory reconciliation.
In November, the infrastructure bill was passed and the reconciliation bill was passed by the House. The Build Back Better bill was defeated in December by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) who stated on Fox News Sunday that he couldn’t vote for it — effectively ending its life in the 50-50 Senate.
