House Democratic leadership: Obama's 'more than halfway' offer is the new starting point

[ProSense]

31. She did no such thing.

Transcript of Pelosi Press Conference Today

Q: Madam Leader, the President has already offered to raise his threshold to $400,000. He has said he would commit to $400 billion over 10 years in cuts to Medicare and health care. He has also agreed to the chained CPI. Can you support those concessions, and how much further could the President go to try to get a deal with Speaker Boehner?

Leader Pelosi. Well, first of all, let me just make clear to everyone what the President did say about the $400,000. It was just on rates, it was just on rates, and it didn't apply to deductions or other tax considerations up to $400,000, so what he was conceding on was about $50 billion, about $50 billion, as compared to what the Republicans are doing with this bill, which is closer to $500 billion in terms of lost revenue. So, the President, yes, he did say he would do that.

The cuts, he has always talked about that; he has always talked about that. In regard to – and I think there are ways to do that, and one of the places you can go and get a big chunk of money is to – the cost of drugs in our system. We know that the President has in his budget over $100 billion – is it $130 billion in the budget? I don't know what the net of that is, but it is a big, a great deal of savings. So, yes, you can put that kind of, those kinds of savings together there.

On the CPI, chained CPI, if – and we have had this conversation, too. What we have said, any consideration cannot harm the poor and beneficiaries. So where are the vulnerabilities there? With people on SSI, they would have to be protected, with people who have received Social Security for at least 20 years, people like 85 years old, where savings start to fade, you would have to mitigate for the change at that point. And then there are people that are really poor, because your Social Security is tied to your wages, as you well know, and so you would have to mitigate there in the middle. So how much do you save by the time you mitigate for SSI, people with disabilities, poor people, and really older, much older people? With all of these things, as I said with the age, how much do you really – but if there are some savings that do not harm people who are in need, then that is something to look at, but we are actually looking at the bigger picture. It doesn't mean you subscribe to everything within it, and certainly my colleagues are not happy with the chained CPI, but if we were very happy with the proposal that the President put forth, I am not sure it would have much of a chance on the Republican side. So it is a compromise, and I salute the President for his trying to find a middle ground, even more, making another step to find a solution, but this is within range, you know, in terms of the – before the silliness that started with the million dollar proposal, there was a place to negotiate on this in terms of spending cuts, in terms of reviewing items like chained CPI, in terms of revenue, and let's hope that whatever happens on the floor – it is interesting, do you know how many times what has come to the floor has changed since yesterday? I don't know if you were here last night. Over and over and over again, a different version of the story was coming out of the Rules Committee, and the one that surprised me the least was when they pulled the 250 [thousand] and above, because I knew if they brought that to the floor, it could win.
http://www.democraticleader.gov/Pelosi_Press_Conference_on_Boehner_Plan_B

Why do people feel the need to distort this and keep pushing something that is no longer on the table?

The President is making an announcement shortly.