Last Friday at her weekly press briefing, Nancy Pelosi caught a lot of folks, including us, off-guard when she suggested that she had no intention of supporting a debt ceiling increase. The comments led Bloomberg and others to speculate that Democrats were looking to somehow tie a debt ceiling vote to blocking the President's tax plan, presumably a non-starter for Republicans.
Needless to say, after 8 years of bashing Republicans for using debt ceiling votes as leverage to try to force spending cuts, Pelosi's comments were shocking, even for her. Here's what she said last week:
"I don't have any intention of lifting the debt ceiling to enable the Republicans to give another tax break to the wealthy in our country. To further exacerbate the challenge that is created when they have their trickle down economics."
"The president keeps saying 'the tax bill is moving through Congress,' it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. So you understand the frustration. It doesn't exist. There is no tax bill moving through Congress."
But apparently it was all just a simple misunderstanding attributable to an inability to achieve crystal clarity during last week's press briefing...you know, because "I don't have any intention of lifting the debt ceiling" was completely ambiguous, at best.
Luckily, Pelosi was questioned about the debt ceiling again this week giving her the opportunity to clarify...
"No, I wasn't clear. My point was, there should be no signal from a clean debt ceiling that we pass it, that this is license to increase the debt."
...except that her clarification was also about as clear as mud.
Thankfully, however, this week she kept rambling until something resembling a coherent thought finally surfaced: "plain and simply, for a clean debt ceiling."
Here is the clip from this week's presser (forward to 14:50 or click here for the relevant clip):
Ironically, Pelosi started out today's meeting by questioning Trump's "fitness for office" and suggesting that he should "get some sleep"...a suggestion that both Pelosi and John McCain should both probably consider themselves...
