Pelosi slams GOP threats to hold up federal funding over COVID mandates

During her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Republican threats to vote against funding the government over the Biden administration’s vaccine and testing mandates. If a funding package isn’t agreed to by the House and Senate by Friday night, the government will shut down Saturday.

Video Transcript

- Speaker, once again we're at a deadline for funding the government, there's a deadline to raise the debt ceiling-- What kind of a message does it send to the American people that even keeping the government open is a struggle? I mean, we're sitting here talking about whether or not the house, the Senate can get it done.

NANCY PELOSI: The message is that the obstacle to moving forward with most of what we want to do lies in the Senate and the person of Mitch McConnell. You like to make it look like, oh we can't get things-- no! We've been trying to pass-- we've been trying to come together to do the omnibus bill, but the Republicans will not come to the table to discuss it.

So they don't care about this Saturday, I think they just want to get the job done, and we will get it done. And we just have to hope that we would have some kind of-- instead of repeating the Republican message-- some accurate depiction of what is going on here. But we will get it done, and we will get it done in a timely fashion. Yes, Jake.

- May I ask, are you going to-- in anticipation that Republicans might slow this up, the government funding-- will you keep the house here this weekend, or do you plan to let them disperse after you pass this?

NANCY PELOSI: Well we anticipate that the Senate will pass of the legislation. I don't think that their anti-vaxxing thing-- How do they explain to the public that they're shutting down government because they don't want people to get vaccinated? Why don't you go ask them?

This is so silly. This is so silly that we have people who are anti-science, anti-vaccination, saying they're going to shut down government over that, and you're asking me what's our message. Our message is that we have to respect governance, and we have to respect science, and that's what we are doing, and we will pass this legislation.

Our members, whether they are here or their home, stand ready to keep government open. It doesn't matter their location. Mr. Hoyer was very clear in our caucus this morning that we-- in our WIP meeting this morning-- that while we are optimistic about what it is, we'll stay close to ensure that-- but it's not-- we're not going to go for there anti-vaxxing. OK. So if you think that's how we're going to keep government open-- forget that.