House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday declared that Congress is a “superior branch” of government, as the clash between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration over closely held documents intensifies.
During an interview with Robert Costa for Washington Post Live, Pelosi, D-Calif., was asked whether Congress is functioning as a coequal branch of government.
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2020 Democratic presidential candidates ignore Nancy Pelosi's call for Democrats to own the center-left
Fox has once again given you a 'bullet point' to use as a political weapon. This has been entirely taken out of context and context is important. There's one way to put it into context and that's to watch the actual video of her CSPAN interview, or at least read the statement to get context. Taking a few words such as 'I think we are the superior branch of government' is out of context and inflammatory, and that's exactly what Fox News intended it to be.
But take a closer look at the video, at minute 00:16:15 and listen to the statement. Context is everything. For those who don't want to watch the video, here's the transcript from that portion of the interview.
[Washington Post] Discussion With House Speaker Pelosi | C-SPAN.org
Question: "Is Congress at this point in time functioning as a co-equal branch of government?"
"I think we are a superior branch, quite frankly. We have the power to make the law and the president enforces the law. So, we have a big role, the closest to the people, and we have a big role to play. And the president, ....getting back to those
'acting' (referencing those in the cabinet that are in temporary 'acting' positions), so only people have left the administration in disgrace or dismay, so they have acting people. Some people have direct financial personal aggrandizement on decisions they make in their departments. That's why the door to subject themselves to the scrutiny of being confirmed tickets really a very, very sad situation. But that's about a matter for the election to determine, which is only about 18 months away so we are over halfway there. It will be interesting, but it shouldn't have to be this way. I've worked with, I've been in Congress a long time and understand we have a difference of opinion in terms of policy, and you come to Congress confident in your point of view but humble enough to listen to other views because you represent your district of the people and other people represent theirs. And so what our founders had in mind is we could have this debate. What is the role of government on the spectrum? How much federal, how much local and how must state. And that's exciting. But when you have a White House that is anti-governance, anti-science, it's very hard to stipulate a set of facts that they will be a proper government role in. We don't want anymore government than we need, but there's a proper role for governance. President George Washington cautioned against political parties for war with their own government, does that sound familiar to you? So, that they acting, I think everything. They have an acting chief of staff and that doesn't even require Congressional approval. I mean, it's sad.
I think we should be very prayerful about this. Our Founders --I keep going back to them because imagine the courage they had to declare independence, to wage a war against the greatest naval power that existed at the time too, to declare independence, to fight that war, to win that war and to establish a country predicated on the point of people coming together and thank God they made the Constitution amendable so it really could lift up the hope and promise of it all, the courage of it all." (end)
Nancy Pelosi's response continued and you can hear it but essentially what she was saying is that the cabinet and posts that are Congressionally approved, no longer exist and are in fact being manned by people that haven't been confirmed, lack experience and are only 'acting' in their current roles. The previous conversation was in regard to the enormous turnover of cabinet and staff in the White House, so, in this respect, yes, the Congress is superior because all are democratically elected government officials and none have been hand-picked or placed in their positions without proper vetting or election.