Jon Stewart Laughs In Nancy Pelosi’s Face Over Obamacare [Video]
Jon Stewart and his Daily Show audience laughed at Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi when she claimed she had no clue why the Obamacare rollout failed and that it wasn’t her job to know.
Obamacare, a.k.a the Affordable Care Act, passed Congress when Pelosi — the former House speaker who is now the minority leader — and her fellow Democrats controlled both chambers. No Republican voted in favor of Obamcare.
Apparently Pelosi thought she would receive softball questions in the Stewart interview on Thursday night and came armed with GOP-bashing talking points that were likely fed to her by a staffer. Stewart, a generally strong Obama supporter who shares Pelosi’s belief in Big Government initiatives including Obamacare, nonetheless questioned her about the inability to implement these programs in an efficient manner. With that in mind, Stewart specifically asked her why the glitch-filled HealthCare.gov website wasn’t executed competently.
“I don’t know,” responded Pelosi, to audience laughter.
Joked Stewart: “Oh, well, let me get the House minority leader here, I can ask her. Hold on — what do you mean you don’t know? How do you not know?”
“That’s not my responsibility,” Pelosi claimed. The California lawmaker is also famous for saying that Congress would have to pass Obamacare first to find out what was in it.
In the Stewart interview, Pelosi conceded, however, that the rollout was “appalling” and “shameful” and that someone should fix it.
Stewart pursued another angle, that there might be corruption in the process because of the revolving employment door between the federal government and lobbyists/government contractors. Pelosi also claimed she didn’t anyone from her office that was part of the revolving door. According to the OpenSecrets watchdog website, 28 Pelosi staffers have participated in the revolving door that Stewart was talking about.
Commenting on the Stewart-Pelosi interview, the HotAir.com website observed that “Who ran the House when the ObamaCare bill passed, with only votes from her party? Who claimed at the time that we couldn’t know how awesome this bill would be until it passed, because you couldn’t expect politicians to actually read a 2800-page bill before they voted on it? Given that this passed entirely on votes from her own party, and with some procedural chicanery thrown in for good measure, does she feel no responsibility at all for the results of this legislation she herself championed?”
Pelosi is said to be among the richest Members of Congress, with a net worth of about $58 million.
In an October Daily Show interview, Stewart pressed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as to why the Obamacare employer mandate was postponed for big business but there was no equivalent postponement of the individual mandate. Sebelius was unable to offer a coherent response to his inquiry.
Watch the Jon Stewart-Nancy Pelosi Daily Show interview in the which the former House speaker denies responsibility for Obamacare problems:
