The White House Friday attempted to defuse simmering tensions with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who unsuccessfully tried to spike a spending bill endorsed by President Obama but opposed by most progressive lawmakers in the lower chamber.
“It’s hard to think of anybody that the president has worked with more closely … than Leader Pelosi,” insisted White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“That didn’t change yesterday, and it’s not going to change in the future,” he added.
Just a day earlier, Pelosi came out against a $1.1 trillion spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year, slamming provisions that rolled back parts of the Dodd-Frank Act and chipped away at campaign finance laws.
The White House ultimately got enough Democrats to support the measure, despite objections from Pelosi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., among other progressives.
The Senate is expected to vote on the bill soon.
The prospect of Democrats splitting from the White House is particularly troubling for Obama as he enters his final two years in office and needs maximum support from liberal lawmakers with Republicans set to control both chambers of Congress.
The White House on Friday said its goal was not unanimous Democratic approval but “getting enough Democrats to support it that it would pass.”
And Earnest declined to weigh in on the perception that Pelosi had been frozen out of negotiations between House Republicans and Senate Democrats.
“This is ultimately a negotiation,” Earnest said, “between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.”
