House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she is “staying on as Speaker” to protect the Affordable Care Act.
Pelosi added during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she could have “gone home” if Hillary Clinton had been elected president in 2016.
“I’m staying as Speaker to protect the Affordable Care Act. That’s my main issue, because I think that’s, again, about the health and financial health of the America’s families and if Hillary had won, I could go home,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi, who formally announced her bid for Speaker after the Democrats won control of the House in last week’s midterms, said her perspective as a woman will be necessary.
“I hope we will have a woman president very soon. … The fact that we almost had one would have been motivation for me to say, ‘There’s a woman at the table,’ ” she said. “It’s very important. You cannot have the four leaders of Congress, the president of the United States, these five people, and not have the voice of women,” she said.
Pelosi on Sunday also called on Republicans in Congress to join Democrats in working to protect preexisting conditions in health-care law.
“They misrepresented during the campaign where they were on this,” she said of Republicans. “They have another chance now, with us in the majority, to join us in removing all doubt that the pre-existing medical condition is the law — the benefit — is the law of the land.”
Republican lawmakers backed bills protecting pre-existing conditions in the last days before the election, and President Trump argued that “all Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them.”