Pelosi says House will skip recess while government is shut down

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the House will be in session next week instead of taking a recess week and continue to work on legislation to end the government shutdown.

“We have canceled our district work period next week to stay here to work on legislation to open up government, to continue our ongoing drumbeat of bills to open up government, starting with bills that the Republicans themselves passed in the Senate but now won’t take up,” Pelosi said. “But we’ll go to the next step next week on that.”

While Pelosi did not specify what those bills were, she later dropped a hint when she responded to a question about why Democrats aren’t presenting Republicans a counter offer on what they’d be willing to fund for border security.

“Last Congress before we adjourned, we gave the administration exactly what the department asked for. It passed in the Senate,” she said. “So when you say we aren’t negotiating, we are negotiating . ... You will be seeing things unfolding in the next few days about what our next few bills will be on the floor.”

Pelosi noted that 90 percent of the drugs and many of the asylum-seekers coming into the United States come through the ports of entry and thus border security solutions need to focus first and foremost on those areas.

“This has to be evidence-based, not notion-mongered,” she said.

Abaca Press/tns Newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during the 116th Congress on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3 in Washington, D.C.