House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Friday that resolving the stalemate in Congress over funding the government will “take some coming together on the Republican side.”
“It’s very hard to negotiate with the Republicans when they can’t negotiate with themselves,” the democratic leader said on “CBS This Morning.”
Pelosi said that Democrats already agreed to spending levels set by the GOP, but that due to internal divisions Republicans don’t have “the ability to take yes for an answer.” She also seemed to fault the GOP for framing President Barack Obama’s opposition to defunding his signature health care law as a refusal to negotiate.
“If you say to the president, ‘we only will open government if you eliminate the Affordable Care Act’ — that’s just a nonstarter,” she said.
Beyond the current shutdown, Pelosi cited GOP votes against the George W. Bush administration’s TARP bill and Hurricane Sandy aid as evidence that some Republicans “don’t believe in a government role.”
“They have something going on there,” she said. “I say, Republicans, take back your party.”
