Opposing the White House on trade is one thing. But don't expect Nancy Pelosi to line up behind Elizabeth Warren and demand President Barack Obama get tougher on Wall Street.
"There may have been a couple of people who say that, but that is not the consensus in our party," Pelosi said in a 45-minute interview. On the charge that the administration has been "too soft" on Wall Street, she added: "The financial industry doesn't agree with that."
Her comment was a reminder that, as the leader of House Democrats, Pelosi outranks Warren despite all the attention the Massachusetts senator has attracted lately for blocking an Obama appointment to the Treasury and slamming Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White. Pelosi joined Warren in the vain attempt to stop Congress from giving the president enhanced authority to negotiate an Asian trade deal.
In some ways, the House leader's comment was unsurprising. Pelosi is a prodigious fundraiser who needs some Wall Street backing for her effort to recapture a Democratic majority. She also was the speaker who pushed through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulation bill that Warren wishes had been tougher.
(Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill e-mailed to call the reference to her fundraising "really unfair" because "It implies that her comments on a policy issue are tied to her fundraising...Nobody has been tougher on Wall Street-in ACTUALLY legislating-than Pelosi.")
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More broadly, it reflects Pelosi's historic partnership with Obama, despite their divergence on trade. Together the first woman House speaker and first black president won enactment of the national health care law other Democrats had sought unsuccessfully for decades. That law appears more firmly established than ever in the wake of last week's Supreme Court decision.
"I'm very, very proud of the Affordable Care Act," she said. "Nearly 17 million people have health insurance who (otherwise) would not. Seventy million have access to preventive care who would not. Over 100 million people will now not have lifetime limits on what their insurance covers."
"It's Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act," she concluded. "It's here to stay."
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That's only one of the landmark victories she's seen during more than three decades in politics. Another, completed with a Supreme Court ruling last week, was the battle to win gay marriage rights. Pelosi has been a longtime supporter of the cause, even when public opinion was strongly opposed.