Nancy Pelosi: Make millionaires pay

Trying to sell a historic health bill to a balky caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told POLITICO in an interview that she wants to soften a proposed surcharge on the wealthy so that it applies only to families that make $1 million or more.

The change could help mollify the conservative Democrats who expect to have a tough time selling the package back home. Their support is the single biggest key to meeting the speaker’s goal of having health care reform pass the House by the August recess.

The bill now moving through the House would raise taxes for individuals with annual adjusted gross incomes of $280,000, or families that make $350,000 or more.

“I’d like it to go higher than it is,” Pelosi said Friday.

The speaker would like the trigger raised to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for families, “so it’s a millionaire’s tax,” she said. “When someone hears, ‘2,’ they think, ‘Oh, I could be there,’ because they don’t know the $280,000 is for one person.

“It sounds like you’re in the neighborhood. So I just want to remove all doubt. You hear ‘$500,000 a year,’ you think, ‘My God, that’s not me.’”

Pelosi also told POLITICO she will push to “drain” more savings from the medical industry — hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health insurers — than they have given up under current health-reform agreements with the Senate and White House.

Asked whether she believes the industry players will wind up contributing more to the package, Pelosi replied: “I don’t know. I know they can, to the extent that the special interests are willing to cooperate. ... They could do much better. ... Frankly, I think all the money [to pay for health reform] could be drained from the system, if they were willing to do that.”

The speaker said she will try to wring more concessions, setting up a potential battle with health care players who torpedoed President Bill Clinton’s health-reform efforts but have been eager participants in the negotiations this time around.

Pelosi said she is open to other changes — that she is taking an “agnostic” approach to getting a bill, rather than working from a “theology” of reform: “You have to just judge it for: Does it lower costs, improve quality?”

Pelosi now faces more pressure than she ever has in her career — obligated to repeatedly deliver tough votes for an ambitious and popular president, but anxious to minimize the midterm election losses that traditionally befall the party holding the White House.

The speaker professed bemusement at the persistent question she gets about whether it was better to be speaker with a Republican president or a Democratic president.

“Oh, please!” she replied. “Why do people ask that question? Do you have any idea? Like night and day. When people ask it, I think: Would you think that it would be easier to have a Republican president who doesn’t share your values? No, no, no.

“Nothing is easy. It’s challenging to get the job done and live up to the expectations and the hopes of the American people, as the president has taken them all to a new height. ... But ... it’s like having a 1,000-ton anvil lifted off your shoulders.

“People would ask, ‘Now, you’re not going to be the No. 1.’ And I say, ‘This is what I’ve hoped, prayed, dreamed and worked for.’ And it absolutely goes beyond my expectations of what it could be.”





Some House members are concerned that they’re being asked to take a tough vote that may be for nothing if the Senate doesn’t follow through. Some Pelosi advisers had considered keeping the House in session into August so that leaders could be sure the Senate was going to vote before House members take the risk themselves.

But Pelosi is plunging ahead. “We’re just staying on our own course, and we hope that the Senate will stay on a parallel course, to have this done by [early August]. Whatever it is, we will be ready. ... As I always say, we’re going forward when we’re ready. And I’m sure we’ll be ready.”

Pelosi said she has felt a certain “serenity” ever since she became speaker and says she’s “ready for all of this.” Ticking off the year’s remarkable agenda, she praised the stamina of her members, chairs and leaders, calling the Democratic team a “partnership.”

“I have the confidence when I go down a path that we are going down that path together,” she said. “It is a heavy lift, sometimes. But it one based on respect for the members. So we’ll take the time, have the conversations, do what needs to be done. ... It’s such a tremendous honor to be speaker of the House. To be able to serve with Barack Obama is really a joy. He’s a great leader ... with a vision, a strategic approach to it and the eloquence to take it to the American people.”

Pelosi said White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has tight relationships throughout the House, is “doing an excellent job.”

“He’s great, and I knew he would be,” she said. “The only thing is, I certainly would still like to have him here. There’s no question about that. But I’m so proud of him. I take some level of pride in his success, having appointed him to the DCCC, only in his second term, and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee.”

POLITICO spoke with Pelosi on Friday afternoon in her suite of offices on the West Front of the Capitol, overlooking the National Mall. She spoke proudly of that morning’s two committee votes on health care, starting in the wee hours with the Ways and Means Committee and continuing after breakfast with the Education and Labor Committee.

“It’s such a big day for us,” she said. “I don’t’ think anybody would have ever thought that would be happening on schedule, the way it is. So it’s pretty exciting. It’s historic.”

Her challenge now is to keep making history, against ever harsher odds. Despite the onus on her to turn President Barack Obama’s promises into legislation, Pelosi is relishing the pinnacle of a lifetime in and around politics.

Now, she’s arguably the second most powerful person in government, yet obliged to court fickle members, vote by vote. Some friends said the nail-biter vote for Obama’s climate-change plan was the most difficult thing she’d ever done. But she said health care would probably be “the most exciting.”

“Every single person in America is an expert on his or her health care,” she said. “The differences among members are regional, they’re generational, they’re ethnic — concerns that are really not necessarily political, partisan. We want this to work for the country. So we have to listen to everybody.

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