House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on the sixth anniversary of Obamacare that the law is consistent with goals of America’s founders because it delivers people “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“I think about our founders, and they in our Declaration of Independence talked about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'” she said outside Capitol Hill Wednesday. “And that is what the Affordable Care Act is about.”
“The liberty to pursue our happiness,” Pelosi said, adding that Obamacare “takes us to this place.” President Obama signed the bill into law six years ago today.
Pelosi has often said that Obamacare is about ‘”life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” in part because it gives people the freedom to pursue their goals without having to worry about whether they can find affordable healthcare that for many people is tied to their job.
On the House floor in March 2012, Pelosi called on her colleagues to remember “what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee.”
She echoed these sentiments again in November 2013 at an event in Washington, D.C.: “As we talk about the First Amendment, let’s go back even further than that — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A healthier life, the liberty to pursue your happiness so that you’re not job-locked because you have a pre-existing condition or your child does, but you are free — that liberty to pursue your passion, whether you want to be a writer, a photographer, be self-employed, start a business, change jobs. This is a transformative initiative.”
At the Department of Labor to mark National Equal Pay Day last April, she declared, “With healthcare and all the related issues, equal pay, all of that, give people a life, a healthier life to pursue their happiness.”
