fish and wildlife services versus the sierra club. jones versus mississippi, and fulton versus city of philadelphia. listen to the arguments live or on-demand at c-span.org. >> earlier today, nancy pelosi held a briefing with reporters at the capital. she talked about legislative priorities and the presidential election. this is about 20 minutes. losey: here we are, pelosi: our focus has been on stopping and crushing the coronavirus. in terms of the election, we are confident.

we are calm. we have prepared. we are ready. we are ready to address the coronavirus anyway that is based virus,nce, crushes the and addresses the impact on the likelihood and life of our democracy. we are at a fork in the road. the path we have been on has taken us to a place where we are approaching 9 million infections. 250,000 people that have died. to tenshat has taken us of millions of people on unemployment. 8 million people falling into poverty. 17 million children food insecure. millions on unemployment. and the situation worsened if we do not change our path.

patheroes act as offered a , science-based, well-funded that honors our heroes, crushes the virus, and puts money in the pockets of the american people. morning i and this sent a letter to secretary mnuchin, spelling out some of the concerns we are waiting to hear back from the administration. in good faith, i believe both sides will come to the table to discuss the priorities. ago, the secretary said he was willing to accept our testing language. he wanted to make a light touch on the language. two weeks ago it was 55% of the language, eliminating our initiatives that addressed

the disparities of the virus when it came to minority communities. more people in the minority community have died of the virus than those not in the minority community. are said it before, if you a black child, you have five times more chance going to the hospital then if you are a white child. it is sinful we have not addressed protecting the lives of the american people on the path this president has taken. calling it a hoax, saying it is going to magically disappear. even though in all of our ledges nation we have talked about testing as being a key to the letteris, as talks about, state and local government.

saidis the statement that face the biggest cash crisis, state and local governments face the biggest cash crisis since the great depression. president says this is unnecessary to do. state and local government fiscal soundness is important to our economy. not only that, we want to honor our heroes, they are out there, health-care workers, police and fire. sanitation, transportation, teachers. it is apresident says matter of pride he not support them. schools. most of the schools could be

would takely if we the scientific approach. it takes money. it takes more money then they are willing to put up and we are asking for their response in that regard. teachers,re ventilation, sanitation, technology to enable our children to actually attend school. children learning, parents are earning. so parents can go to work. of that, we want more money for child care. children are not going to school, the parents cannot work unless we have more funding for childcare. they will only go so far. that is what we are asking them, to go farther. . million families

8 million more people have fallen into poverty. there is a way out of that. a tax credit. these are working poor people falling into poverty. and yet, the number they gave us was zero. they admitted zero is not a number. they don't hesitate to give $150 billion in credit in a tax advantage to the wealthiest people in our country. and yet they refuse to help families. and all of this is stimulus for the economy. even if you don't care about people, there is some question whether they do. you should understand it is stimulus to the economy. people spend this money immediately. inject demand, create jobs.

that is what has helped the economy even in this third quarter. now that money is saving. unemployment insurance, we are still waiting for the response to the 5 million americans that are exhausting their benefits. not a subject, not a provision. it is not an item. it is an ethic. workers will be safe in the workplace. especially in the time of a pandemic where the exposure to it could not only make them families.also their if they bring that home. think we have a list of concerns, just give us your answer. equities,an waive the

we don't like this or that, and come to a conclusion. but we are ready. i feel confident joe biden will be elected president on tuesday. count on theand election, he will be elected and he will be inaugurated president of the united states. while we don't want to be overconfident or assume anything, we have to be ready for how we are going to go down a different path. we have come to a fork in the road when it comes to the coronavirus. the president has taken us on a deadly path. the heroes act takes us on a scientific path to save the lives of the american people. it is interesting to see how many people are turning out. voting in advance.

whoever they are voting for. it is a joy to behold, people exercising their civic duty, the sacred right we have to vote in our democracy. it is appalling to see the obstacles to participation the republicans and president are putting in the way. we proclaim another governments try to undermine the integrity ,f elections or the credibility it is appalling when the president of the united states ontributes to placing doubt the credibility of our elections. a president that says he may not accept a peaceful transfer of power. all the more reason for us to thank god for the courage of these people going out to vote. waiting in line. because the republicans refuse to put money in any of the legislation we had to the extent

necessary to make sure when people vote there is ample space to facilitate. it is a discourtesy to the american people to say, you stand in line for hours. we can do something about it. your time is not worth anything to us. so again, this weekend it will be interesting to see how many people will vote in advance. i hope people will not depend on the mail. they have done all they can to dismantle the postal system. i salute our workers and letter carriers, those making the best of the situation. even the postal service is saying it is too late to mail. a first-class piece of mail to take more than five or six days to reach its destination speaks for itself. here we are.

a remarkable experience at our country has been through. hundreds of thousands of people dying. millions infected. joblessness raging. poverty rates going up. children food insecure. say something about women, in september nearly one million people, one million women left the workplace. one million women left the workplace. what is the president's message to women? we are getting your husbands back to work. that is not even true. what decade is he living in? what century?

so completely removed from the realities of life. that has caused death. any questions? >> thank you. .ou said your confident i want to ask you to look in the future of the coronavirus and any other issues. you talk about your caucus. do you think that could be a problem for the coronavirus or these other initiatives, the environment, voting rights? where you have pushed too far and there is a schism between more moderates and what they intend to do? don't. pelosi: i our caucus has a beautiful array gender id, ethnic

background, geographic differences and the rest. the one thing that unites us is our commitment to working families. theireans our children, health and education. the economic security of their families. a safe environment, including gun safety. in which they can reach their fulfillment. again, we don't want to represent a caucus that is lockstep. we invite the differences of opinion. we do not see that is a problem. we see that as invigoration. >> the economy grew at 33% in the third quarter. does president trump earn any credit for that? had lostelosi: we ground in the second quarter. this barely makes up for that.

and the cares act deserves credit for injecting the resources into the economy, and in the subsequent one. lost 100 in the second quarter and now you're making up $65. if we don't pass a recovery bill, that we19 will face dire circumstances. and thegress administration will work together in a bipartisan way to pass the cares act and subsequent legislation and inject resources in the economy. the lack of doing that is going to take us down another path. >> thank you.

if you are correct joe biden is going to be elected, you're going to confront a balance of power with president trump and a republican senate for the lame-duck. with that not argue for you to take a somewhat smaller build that the system can produce in a lame-duck and get the rest when joe biden is president? speaker pelosi: we are not talking size. we are talking quality. we are not going to take the funds goinghat has to be richest people in america and questioning the integrity of people on unemployment. two reasons. for the american people need help. they need real help. second of all, we have work to do in the joe biden administration. we are going to bring infrastructure. we are going to make sure health

care is available to all americans. lower the cost of prescription drugs. we are going to have hr one, cleaner government so we can reduce the role of special-interest money that prevents us from having policies that the american people need and have doubts we can do unless we reduce the role of dark money. we had a number of bills that will be ready. this will be impacted by the joe biden agenda. his build america better is similar to our moving america forward. between theorking white house and congress to get those done. of ant to have as clean slight as possible going into january. we will have to do more on the coronavirus to make sure there is a vaccine available and will

take resources to make sure it is available to everyone, not just those in a position to pay for it. themould we be talking to if we did not want a bill? act, whichthe heroes the american people need. what mitchng to mcconnell has. people are hungry. people are on the verge of eviction. they need money in their pocket. we have challenges there. they don't believe in governance. they don't like the public role in helping people. they don't believe in science. they ignore the recommendations masking, testing, treatment, ventilation. sanitation. we are in a terrible place. it was a decision made by this

president. we have to have enough money to address that. we have not gotten a yes from the white house on that subject. it has to be about the quality of what it is. it is not just something to say, we surrender. they surrendered to the virus. we are not. do you think about the increasing corporate taxes given the state of the economy? if there is a biden presidency. speaker pelosi: why don't we wait until we win the election and we have our transition and the president puts forward his agenda? we do always thought when major tax policy, we should do it in a bipartisan way. contrary to the dark of night, ofed of light that gave 83% the benefits to the top 1% in our country.

then they reinforced that in the cares act, in the dark of night as well. it is not a question of having that discussion. there's an agreement we should have brought down the corporate rate. we should not have given away the store at the expense of working families. that is it. thank you. what about the dodgers winning the world series? speaker pelosi: i'm happy. it was great. and the lakers. dodgers. isn't it great to watch sports? forget your differences with others. it's therapeutic.

what i like about sports, it's about numbers. i am all about numbers. there is the election, votes on the floor. , because ofumbers this president, failure are so staggering and sad. act on ael us that we different path than where the president is. for the children. thank you. >> senator kamala ha