Pelosi: Even In Minority, We’ll Keep Fighting For A More Equal America

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
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With literally minutes remaining in her tenure as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi addressed a fired-up crowd at the ceremonial swearing in of the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus this morning. Pelosi offered words of praise to the largely left-leaning CBC, and pledged that Democrats will continue to fight hard for progressivism after Speaker John Boehner officially takes the gavel this afternoon.

She cautioned the incoming Republican majority not to ignore the social and economic inequities in society that she said still plague the nation.

“It isn’t enough to say ‘we’re going to put people back to work,'” Pelosi said. “Many people have not had work, because for a number of years they have been excluded. Because our system has favored the high-end.”

Democrats and President Obama took strides to close that gap, Pelosi said, pointing to health care and financial reform, and the stimulus bill (which contained money for so-called “green jobs” that proponents say can expand the middle class.) But the fight is not over yet, Pelosi said, and Democrats will continue to do their best to push the “leverage” in America away from corporate interests and into the hands of the middle class.

“The worker must be valued,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi was wearing a deep purple dress, perhaps an allusion to the coming shift in the House makeup from blue to red. But her rhetoric did not match the color of her outfit, and her speech was steeped in progressive language.

The address comes near the 40th anniversary of the CBC, which was founded in February 1971 by 13 African American members of Congress. The group has expanded over the years both in size and ideology — though still overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal, the CBC’s ranks now include a tea party Republican, Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

Pelosi — and the other speakers at the event this morning, including new CBC chair Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) — pretty much ignored West, keeping the focus on the progressive fights that have come to define the caucus for the last four decades.

Pelosi praised the CBC as “probably the greatest collection of idealism” in the Congress and for its “relentless dissatisfaction with the status quo until many more people can partake in the American dream.”

She promised to keep those values close when it came to dealing with the incoming Republican House leadership.

“What we are saying is, as we go forward, we extend a hand out a willing hand of friendship if our colleagues are interested in creating jobs for all Americans,” Pelosi said, “If they are interested in strengthening the middle class by enhancing those who were there and pulling many more people into it.”

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