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Politics

Pelosi: State of the Union address is ‘so unimportant’ for Americans

By
Bob Fredericks
Published Jan. 24, 2019
Updated Jan. 24, 2019, 12:44 p.m. ET

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she was happy that President Trump agreed to postpone his State of the Union address until after the government reopened — saying the speech was “so unimportant in the lives of the American people” compared to other priorities.

“Last night the president accepted the fact that the State of the Union should be at a time when government is not shut down. I’m glad we could get that off the table. It is so unimportant in the lives of the American people in terms of especially those who are victims of the shutdown, hostages to the president’s applause line in a campaign speech,” Pelosi said at a press briefing, referring to Trump’s oft-repeated call to build a wall on the southern border.

“Thank goodness we have put that matter to rest and we can get on to the subject at hand, open up government so we can negotiate how best to protect our borders.”

The president late Wednesday agreed to postpone the speech after Pelosi rescinded her invitation, which she said was issued at a time Democrats thought a spending and border security deal with Trump was close.

She emphasized that the Democrat-controlled House passed spending bills nearly identical to those passed earlier by the Senate.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell withdrew the bills after Trump, who initially had indicated he would support the Senate bills, changed his mind after withering criticism from conservative pundits and lawmakers.

“We have asked the Republicans to take yes for an answer over and over again and the legislation that we passed this week we have a little more than half a billion dollars for the ports of entry that we have been told by authorities that 90 percent of drugs come through the ports of entry,” Pelosi said, countering the president’s argument that the wall would stop the flow of drugs.

“We have asked [the Senate] over and over again to take yes for an answer. We are firm in our support for how we secure our borders. Let’s have that discussion after we open up government and let us get to work,” she said, before enumerating the various federal agencies that have been shuttered for 34 days and the negative effects the shutdown was having on the country.

“You heard from the [FBI agents] association because of the shutdown that they had no funds to pay for investigation and prosecution of cases including child exploitation, cyber warfare,” she said.

“You have heard from the air traffic controllers, pilots and flight attendants that we have a growing concern for safety and security. We cannot calculate the level of risk currently at play or predict the point at which the system will break.”

Pelosi also noted that US Coast Guard personnel are going without pay and were relying on food banks to feed their families.

Trump, who slammed Pelosi as a radical Democrat on Wednesday, has said he would not sign spending bills unless they include $5.7 billion for sections of the wall.