Pelosi tells Harvard students she read every page of healthcare bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told students at Harvard University on Friday that she had indeed done her reading.
Taking questions during the 90-minute event, Pelosi assured one skeptical undergraduate that she, and many other House members, had read “every page” of the roughly 1,900-page healthcare bill passed by the House.
She expounded on leadership qualities, healthcare reform, the impact of more women in Congress, troops to Afghanistan — oh, and healthcare reform.
Participating in the healthcare debate, so long a signature issue of the late Massachusetts political titan Ted Kennedy, was “humbling,” she said.
Pelosi said she would have had a hard time cobbling together enough votes for a healthcare bill without a public option to balance the influence of insurance companies.
And she sympathized with women’s groups fearful of the Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment contained in the House bill.
But of all the heavy legislative lifting in Congress this year, passing supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan was the hardest, Pelosi said.
It’s criminal what congress is doing against the wishes of the American people.