In November 2017, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., went to bat for disgraced former Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., describing the embattled alleged sexual predator as an “icon.”
Later, in January, she characterized tax reform-related wage increases and bonuses as “crumbs” and “so pathetic.”
Now, Pelosi is defending herself again from allegations that she confirmed Democrats plan to raise taxes should they win a majority this November.
Politico’s Jake Sherman asked Tuesday, “[The National Republican Congressional Committee] have a new ad that they put out after you said you thought you were going to win the majority … the title was, ‘All at stake.’ It said that you would like to institute a single-payer healthcare program and cancel – raise taxes, I think they mean, roll back the tax cuts they passed this year.”
Pelosi responded, “The second part there is accurate. I do think we should revisit the tax legislation in a way that we always have, in a bipartisan, transparent way that the result is unifying for the country.”
Did she just say Democrats plan to raise taxes if they’re successful in the midterms? It’s not entirely clear what she just confirmed, but that’s really on her. As an elected legislator, it’s her responsibility to ensure there’s no ambiguity regarding her policy platform, especially in the area of tax increases. Yet, here we are.
Pelosi’s team claimed Tuesday that she did not endorse tax increases, and that any suggestion to the contrary is a deliberate misrepresentation of what she said.
“Once again, Republicans are desperate to misrepresent any effort to roll back their debt-exploding tax giveaways for big corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent as ‘raising taxes’ on middle class families,” her spokesman said in a statement. “The fact is, while the GOP wrote a bill that ultimately raises taxes on 86 million middle class families, Democrats want to strengthen middle class tax cuts and make them permanent.”
If this story feels familiar, it should. We’ve been down this road before.
In February, Pelosi promised Democrats would “replace and repeal” the GOP tax bill once retaking the majority, sparking speculation over what that would look like and if that would mean tax increases.
Later, in April, she ratcheted the speculation up a notch when she said, “One of our complaints about what they did with the tax bill is they did it in the dark of night with the speed of light. … It’s not about chipping at this piece or that piece, it’s about a comprehensive look at what our tax policy should be for the future.”
Mark Mazur, vice president for policy at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, told PolitiFact at the time that a straight repeal would indeed raise taxes. PolitiFact, for its part, said it was only “half true” to say she promised to raise taxes. That is an annoying rating for something that is obviously all true, but it is what it is.
If a tax-raising repeal is indeed what Pelosi and other party leaders have planned, it would certainly make their boosters in media happy. It would also likely echo failed presidential candidate Walter Mondale’s catastrophic choice to run on raising taxes.
“Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did,” he boasted during his 1984 acceptance speech.
Mondale’s campaign team, which considered his promise to raise taxes a “coup” according to the late Robert Novak, must’ve been surprised by Reagan’s landslide victory. Mondale carried only one state and 13 electoral votes. Reagan got the other 525 votes and 49 states.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Pelosi is bad at what she does.
True, she is a gifted legislator. The congresswoman also has a gift for bringing in cash (she raised an estimated $16 million in the first quarter of 2018). At some point, though, Democrats are going to have to ask if it’s worth it for her very public missteps.
