Pelosi returns to debt ceiling talks

Politico reports

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is back at the bargaining table — but it’s not yet clear whether she’s willing to make a deal.

Burned by President Barack Obama’s decision to keep her out of negotiations on last year’s tax deal and this spring’s budget bill, sources close to the California Democrat say she is torn between playing deal-maker on a debt-limit increase and fully protecting the priorities of Democrats’ liberal base.

On Thursday, in advance of a Friday meeting with the president at the White House, Pelosi lit into Obama’s budget director, Jack Lew, in what is becoming a habit of sending sharp messages through his top aides. Pelosi sought to impress on Lew — and no doubt his bosses at the White House — that House Democrats expect to be consulted more now than on past deals and that the president can’t expect to win passage of a debt-limit package without support from House Democrats.

“Don’t insult us,” she said as Lew tried to explain why House Democrats were cut out of the budget bill discussion earlier this year, according to one source who was in the room. “You guys don’t know how to count.” It was a replay of a similar jab Pelosi took at White House economic adviser Gene Sperling during a similar meeting before the budget bill deal was consummated.

But while House Democrats’ nerves remain raw, they’re in a much better position now to flex their muscles. And Pelosi, once treated as irrelevant by Obama and Republican leaders in Congress, might just have the necessary clout to put a debt-limit deal over the finish line.

It’s not even necessary for Pelosi to vote for a debt deal, it may be enough for her to simply release members of her caucus to make sure it goes through.

Last time around, it was all Boehner and Reid. But Pelosi and her lieutenants have had a front-row seat for these debt-limit talks. She appointed Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to represent House Democrats on a blue-ribbon deficit-reduction panel headed by Vice President Joe Biden, Pelosi’s getting private face time with the president, and she has been invited to group meetings with other congressional leaders.

But being in the room is becoming a bit of a double-edged sword for a leader who will anger a portion of her base with any deal she cuts.

“She’s not averse to a deal,” said one of her closest allies in the House. But, that lawmaker said Pelosi’s first priority has been to defend Democratic values — to push back against Medicare and Social Security cuts envisioned by some of the negotiators.