The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi

Author:Nancy Pelosi [Pelosi, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781668048047
Amazon: 1668048043
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

First Vote: Monday, September 29

Knowing we had to act fast to calm the financial markets and consumers, on Monday morning, we immediately prepared to bring TARP to a vote on the House floor. But I was skeptical of our success. I have never brought a bill to the floor unless I knew for certain that it had the votes. As part of our negotiations, we had agreed that, because Democrats were in the majority, we would produce 120 votes and the Republicans would produce 100, to be sure to reach the 218 needed to pass. These numbers and our agreement were essential, not only to pass the legislation but especially to keep our promises to our rank-and-file members that this would be a bipartisan bill.

I knew that the Democrats would honor our commitment of 120 votes. As always, I had the names of our members who had pledged to vote yes. I told the Republicans and the White House that I needed to see the names of the 100 Republican members who had committed to voting for TARP.

They never showed us the list of names, likely because they knew they didn’t have the votes. But even then, the president said, “Who would possibly vote against this?”

The truth, however, was that TARP would not be a popular vote for members of Congress. Democrats viewed the meltdown as the result of the failed policies of the Bush administration, while many Republicans were opposed to regulation and supervision—and even when the walls came tumbling down, they opposed intervention. They viewed the $700 billion TARP legislation as a major intervention into the financial markets.

But that morning both President Bush and Barney said that even without the 100 Republican names, we should bring up the bill—because it would be worse not to bring it up. Before the vote, our Democratic members met and expressed the obvious concern—that TARP looked like a bailout of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Most of my 120 members insisted that they could not vote for TARP unless I went to the House floor and laid the blame at the Republicans’ doorstep. I promised them that I would describe how we got there.

I began by telling the entire chamber that I was “proud of the debate.” I acknowledged that the $700 billion figure truly was staggering. And I did not shy away from publicly defining, both on the House floor and after for the press, why this crisis had befallen us.

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