PELOSI: Good morning.

AUDIENCE: Good morning.

PELOSI: We know you're out there.

(LAUGHTER)

Yesterday, I had the honor of receiving an honorary degree and making the commencement address at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. We decided to combine our -- my weekly and our wrap-up for this first five months today.

And I have news for you this morning, very good news. And that is that the -- this has been a very good week for new energy policy to take our country in a new direction tort creation of clean-energy jobs, for reducing pollution in the air, for ending our dependence on foreign oil, and for honoring our responsibility to the future by protecting -- preserving our planet.

Earlier this week, the president announced the most aggressive -- the most aggressive -- fuel emissions standards ever. We're proud of that because it built on the legislation passed by the new-direction Congress in the last Congress, but now this is taking -- takes it to a new level. And the president did so bringing all of the stakeholders together.

And last night, last night was very remarkable; 33 to 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed what is transformational, something transformational in how we address the climate change issue and for all the reasons I mentioned about the economy, the environment, our moral responsibility, and our national security.

It is something that we will now build upon as we go forward. So it's a good week on the energy policy. It's also been a good week as we protect the environment, a good week as we protect the consumer, the taxpayers, and the American people in general in terms of their national security.

This week, we were able to pass landmark legislation, whether it was about how people can stay in their homes, how they can pay their credit card bills in a fair and predictable way, protect the consumer in that way. And the president will be signing that bill -- he did this morning -- I don't know if he has, but they were gathered there this morning to do so. I don't know that it's happened yet, but later today, he will pass a procurement bill.

So it's housing, whether it's credit cards, whether it's saving the taxpayers money, it was a very, very good week in passing that legislation, sending it over to the president.

We're also very excited that, as we go into Memorial Day, to take great pride in the service of our men and women in uniform, to thank them in a way that is more than words but deeds. And since -- in the first five months of this year, we have accomplished a great deal for them, building on what we did in the last new-direction Congress.

Many of us met with general -- I say, Secretary Shinseki earlier this week to take pride in what has been done with President Obama and the new-direction Congress in a bipartisan way and, also, to make plans for what we do next. We want our men and women in uniform to know that, as the military says, on the battlefield, we will leave no soldier behind. When they come home, we will leave no veteran behind.

So it was a great five months. It was a great week -- five days, counting the signatures. And I'm going to yield to my colleagues now to talk more about them in terms of the economy, in terms of consumers.

And I'm going yield first to the distinguished majority leader. In doing so, let me say this, this -- what we have done in this first five months was a joint effort, working under the leadership of President Obama with the participation of Congress. To the extent possible, where we could, in a bipartisan way.

PELOSI: None of the success would have been possible without the team -- not only teamwork, the partnership that we all have working together. Our majority leader rules the floor, as you know, and has done an excellent job in arranging for the presentation of our issues.

Our whip, who can't be with us right now, Mr. Clyburn, is the vote counter, and he knows how to count votes. He got enough to get all of this passed. And then the rest of our team has worked in very close concert on how we go forward.

And I want to commend the chair of our caucus, Mr. Larson, the vice chair, Mr. Becerra, is with us today, and Mr. Van Hollen, who is the chair -- he wears two hats. So much talent, he needs two hats. The chair of the DCCC, of course, but in terms of policy here, a member of the leadership and assistant to the speaker.

And so I now, with gratitude and appreciation, recognize the distinguished majority leader.

HOYER: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

I want to reiterate what Speaker Pelosi ended on. This has been an extraordinarily close working team. And the partnership, frankly, between Speaker Pelosi and I over the last six years, 6 and a half years almost now, when we were in the minority, when we were in the majority, over the last two years of the last Congress and then in this first five months of the year. And I might say it has been a leadership team represented here by Mr. Van Hollen, the chairman of our campaign committee and the vice chairman of our caucus, Mr. Becerra. Mr. Clyburn is not here.

We also -- part of our leadership team, we were -- made a very good tactical move earlier in the year when we sent one of our leadership team over to be the chief of staff for the White House. So we have a very close working relationship. He was a very, very important part of our team during the last Congress, the 110th Congress, and we're working very closely together with President Obama, his chief of staff, and his team.

It's been five months, as the speaker said, since we were sworn in as the 111th Congress. And in that time, we have made tremendous strides to create jobs and get our economy back on track. I tell people that I've been a member of Congress since 1981, and in those 29 years, we have had no more productive first five months of a Congress in which I have served. Most importantly, of course, we passed the Recovery Act to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, making investments in important projects in communities across American, steps which are expected to save and create 3.5 million jobs. As the speaker says all the time, our agenda, whatever the particular about is, is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. That is a direct quote from the speaker of the House of Representatives.

 In addition, we passed a budget that makes strong investments in energy technology, an extraordinary accomplishment last night where, after months and months of work, a consensus was created to put forward very, very substantial legislation, one of the most consequential pieces of energy legislation that's passed out of the committee in a very long period of time. I congratulate Mr. Waxman, Mr. Markey, and the Democrats and the Republicans. It was a month- long consideration of a package that was put forward, very ample time to consider all the alternatives and, literally, scores of amendments considered in the committee.

In addition, health care reform and education, which will boost our national competitiveness and create jobs, was addressed in our Recovery Act and continues to be addressed. Health care, of course, will be one of the major issues, along with energy, that we will be dealing with in the months ahead.

Congress also has made great strides on health care. It was not only the health care investments in the budget that I mentioned, we also extended health insurance to 4 million low-income children. Those 4 million children would have been included in the last Congress but for the veto of George Bush.

We had an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill that passed in the 110th Congress. George Bush said no, and we lacked 12 Democrats in the House of Representatives. But because the American people selected Barack Obama to be our president, he signed that bill. And those 4 million additional children to the 7 million in the program are now covered. Their families are more secure. They sleep better at night because of that bill.

HOYER: We are close to bringing tobacco products under the regulation of the Food and Drug Administration, a critically important bill for the health, particularly, of those same children to many of whom, without adequate regulation and information, would take up smoking. The House expects to consider a conference report on the tobacco bill in June.

This work isn't just important for Americans' health. Health care is an economic priority because the out-of-control costs of our current system are training family budgets and straitjacketing American business, large and small. So this is an economic issue, an issue of families, an issue for children, an issue for single moms. But it's also an issue for our business community.

President Obama and congressional Democrats want to pass a comprehensive bill that contains rising costs, preserves patient choice. If you've got it and you like it, you can keep it. That's our mantra. And every American ought to know that and feel comfortable with that premise.

We want to preserve patient choice of doctors and of their health plans and insure access to affordable quality health care for all Americans. That will make for healthier Americans and a healthier economy and a better America. There is unprecedented focus and unity on the need for health reform in our caucus.

Speaker Pelosi and I and the leadership have been meeting with every group in our caucus. I've been meeting with Congressman Blunt, who heads up the Republican Task Force. Our committee chairmen have been reaching across the aisle to talk to their ranking members. We want all of the members of the Congress to joining in this historic effort.

The speaker and I are meeting with members of our caucus to build broad support. As I said, the three chairmen are doing the same. Democrats have held more than 170 health care events in districts already with another 100-plus events planned for Memorial Day district work period.

Our president said we wanted it build our health care plan from the bottom up. And what he meant is not just the president saying this is the plan. He wanted all of us working together to make sure that the health care system in America serves us all and serves us well. We hope to pass health care reform by August. That is a target, not a deadline. We want to get this done right, and we want to create that consensus. But that is our target in the House. The speaker points out that she doesn't want me to speak too definitively for what the Senate is or is not going to do. And, certainly, I am not -- I'm not confident enough to do that.

But I want to say this. Mr. Baucus (ph) and I and Senator Kennedy -- Senator Kennedy and I met during the last Congress. Senator Baucus (ph) and I met last week. And we met on a number of occasions to talk about how we move this forward.

Why? Because the speaker, the president of the United States, and all of us believe that health care for all Americans, with their choice in tact so they can choose what they want in terms of insurance, doctors, and hospitals, is a critically important objective as is energy independence and addressing the challenge of global warming.

I want to thank the speaker for her leadership. I want to close in saying that the speaker and I consider ourselves a close team, bringing all of our caucus together to create the consensus for change that American voted for in November of last year.

I now want to yield to...

PELOSI: That's why we had the success last night with the energy bill. Henry Waxman was a master, a virtuoso in orchestrating the development of this bill and its passage through the committee. Ed Markey has been working on the substance of this bill for a very, very long time.

And what we said to everyone is what we say on all of these issues. We're not leaving anyone behind. We're going down this path together. And that's what they did in a bill that had great consensus on the committee, a good, strong vote, a tribute to Henry's legislative virtuosity and Ed Markey's extraordinary commitment to this issue. But, really, a tribute to the president of the United States for making this a priority as it is one of the three pillars of the budget that we passed at the end of the 100 days -- education, health care, and energy.

So, again, we are absolutely elated by the success, know there's much more work to be done. But to Steny's point, it's about building consensus, working together to bring it -- take it down. And the forum for us to do that is our House Democratic Caucus with Mr. Larson and Becerra hold forth to be that as a form of debate and consensus building.

Thank you, Mr. Leader.

BECERRA: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It's been a thrilling ride so far, and that's just the first four months. I believe most of the members of the caucus -- and we have an opportunity every week to have a sit-down with them -- would agree that we are very well led at the helm by our president, Barack Obama , and our speaker and our majority leader and the rest of the leadership team in the House and, certainly, with Mr. Reid and his leadership team in the Senate.

But we know that these past four months have really been our way to communicate to the American people that we want to restore confidence, not just confidence in government, confidence in the economy, but confidence that they can lift themselves up as well. And we want to give them the tools to do exactly that.

At the end of the day, this is about putting people first, whether you're a taxpayer, whether you're a consumer, whether you are someone in need of health care, we're trying to elevate you, make you believe once again that this economy, this government, our people are really going to lift us up, as we've always seen it happen in the past.

The credit card bill, the housing bill, all of these things are meant to tell people -- send them a signal that we are trying to make it better for them, to give them confidence that they can go ahead and continue to lead their lives. But it's tough sometimes. When, today, you have a debt of a trillion dollars -- and I don't mean government debt. I'm talking about consumer debt in credit cards, a trillion dollars. You've got a problem especially when the rules of the game are changed midstream.

A trillion dollars, if you were to translate every dollar into a second, that debt would have commenced at the time that human beings were trying to figure out how to start a fire. Thirty-two thousand years ago you'd have to begin to accumulate a dollar every second of time, 32,000 years ago. That's a lot of money that consumers in America owe.

On top of that, of course, we saw that President Obama inherited an over trillion-dollar defendant from the previous administration. Lots of work to do to restore confidence. But it's tough to restore confidence when Americans are getting letters like this. And no one is immune. This is a letter I received last month from my credit card company. Now, I pay through auto payment on my credit card. Yet I received a letter telling me that, guess what, we reviewed the files of spending and debt profiles of our card members, and we're making some difficult decisions. Unfortunately, that's why we're writing to you today. We have had to make the difficult decision to lower the credit limit on your account.

Now I -- I don't have -- I have a zero balance at the end of the month every month. And so I received this letter. And, of course, they said your credit limit may have changed, but your value to us has not.

(LAUGHTER)

Now, that's the letter I received, and I pay on time automatically every month.

Now, if this isn't bad enough for the Becerra household, let me tell you, my daughters are getting letters to apply for credit. Now, if it weren't for the fact that they are still minors -- my oldest is now 16. And for the last two years, she's been receiving credit card applications. We shouldn't have to worry too much.

But that's what's going on in the Becerra home. I can only imagine what's going on in other homes around America. And so how can they have the confidence that we're trying to do the right thing when people across America are getting letters like this, including people who pay their bill on time, who try to do things the right way?

A trillion dollars is out there in consumer debt today. We're going to change that. Working with the president and this leadership team in the Congress, we're going to restore confidence to Americans that we want to do this the right way.

Next up, health care. We intend to move forward. This is not a do-nothing Congress. We will not accept those who say status quo is OK. We intend to move forward on health care reform.

Climate change. We want to forever rid ourselves of the dependence on other foreign sources of energy. And so we're going to move forward, but it's tough when you get letters like this to make people believe that we're trying to do it the right way.

We intend to give people a different signal. That's why we did this credit card bill, to give people rights. That's why we're going to do health care reform. That's why we're doing climate change. That's why we did the housing bill. That's why we did a stimulus package through this Economic Recovery Plan.

We are going to restore the confidence that Americans used to have in their government and in their people. And we believe that if we do it the right way, no one will receive these kinds of letter and, certainly, 16-year-olds will not as well.

BECERRA: With that, it's my pleasure to introduce the assistant to the speaker and someone who has become very valuable to each and every Democrat in the Democratic Caucus as we move forward every two years to try to change this country to a new direction for all America. And that is our leader, Mr. Chris Van Hollen .

VAN HOLLEN: Thank you, Xavier.

And I was just thinking as Xavier was speaking, God help us in the Van Hollen household if our 18-year-old daughter gets one of those credit cards. We are in big, big trouble.

But Javier spoke about the importance of restoring confidence around the country. And I think everything that this leadership team, this Congress, and the president has tried to do is these important first months is geared to doing exactly that. And a very important component of that is to restore accountability and transparency to the government because the American people are willing to make an investment in our common future, but they went to make sure that their monies are being well spent.

And from day one, President Obama, Democrats in the House and in the Senate have worked very closely together to pass legislation to get us toward greater accountability and transparency. If you look at the president's budget, it finally ended this fiction that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not costing the American people money.

It ended all sorts of other budget gimmicks that suggested that our financial situation was better than it really was. So we are restoring ourselves to budget honesty and put an end to the budget gimmickry we've seen. And the president's budget, of course, over a four-year period, cuts the deficit by two-thirds.

Just this morning, we applied that same principle of accountability and transparency to a bill that the president assigned in the Rose Garden today to begin to bring down those huge cost overruns in many of the Pentagon's largest weapons acquisition contracts. GAO did a report recently that showed huge cost overruns in those areas.

And every dollar that goes to a cost overrun is a dollar that we cannot invest in our armed services and cannot invest in strengthening our national security.

Just two days ago, we tried to, also, provide greater accountability within the financial markets by passing -- the Congress passed and the president signed anti-fraud legislation to provide the FBI and law enforcement with greater tools to crackdown on fraud in the mortgage sector, in other financial sectors, the kind of fraud that we've seen where people were taking advantage of unwitting stockholders and others for their own personal gain and at the loss of everyone else in the country, investors who were involved in those decisions.

So that was a very important measure. And, finally, that measure included the establishment of an independent commission, something that Mr. Larson has been pushing for, the speaker and others have been pushing for to go back and investigate the causes of the financial meltdown.

We want to bring independent experts together so that we can learn from our mistakes and make sure we address those issues going forward in legislation as well as other efforts that we undertake here.

So I think our efforts to restore accountability and transparency to the government, to our investments, to federal contracting, and to make sure that we hold people in the private sector more accountable have been an important part of trying to restore people's faith in their national government. And it's been a team effort. And it's something that we will continue to do in the days ahead.

Thank you.

PELOSI: Thank you. I'm particularly proud of the commission because, earlier this spring, I called for a Pecorra (ph)-like commission. Mr. Larson had been working on one for a very long -- for months, even before this new Congress came into session. And the product that is in there is bipartisan in its -- in its provenance. It came from Democrats and Republicans in the Congress and, of course, bipartisan in its makeup as it goes forward.

So it didn't take us very long to get to that place. And I -- the American people know there is a need to understand how this financial collapse came about. It's in the about assigning blame. It's about avoiding these problems in the future. And so we go from here.

PELOSI: The first hundred days, we talked about that. We came together to talk about that. But it laid down a marker and the blueprint in the budget for how we go forward. Under Steny's leadership -- the distinguished majority leader's leadership, working with the chairman, Mr. Miller, Mr. Rangel, and Mr. Waxman on health care and every single member of the Congress. Many, many people serve on the three committees of jurisdiction, Democrats and Republicans -- probably a third of the Congress, if you add it all up.

So they will be on the ground floor in the development of this legislation and it unfolds. I promised the president a week or so ago at the White House that we would have it on the floor of the House by the end of July. You see the progress we are making on the energy bill. It's so exciting, and we're so grateful to Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey and to the president and, as somebody said, the members of the committee on both sides of the aisle. And then the issue of education, which is unfolding for us now -- and to do it in a fiscally sound way that takes down the deficit, cuts taxes, creates jobs, and holds a government accountable to the American people.

With that, I'd be pleased to take any questions.

QUESTION: Have you given any thought to who you would like to appoint to the financial commission that was established?

PELOSI: The -- Senator Reid and I will -- have talked about how we get together. We'll bring our names together to see that we have the balance between the two -- the people are coming forth with -- there are certain criteria in the bill that have to be met. We want, of course, to have a full representation of many ideas on the commission.

I mean, one of my -- to tell you the honest truth, one of the people that I would like to appoint the most to the commission is a Republican. And but three Democrats, two Republicans, so maybe -- I don't know how that will work out. We want the best possible people. We are reviewing names. We are going to work together on how we put this...

QUESTION: (Inaudible)?

PELOSI: No, no, no.

QUESTION: Since last week, when you knew when and your comments about misleading, being misled by the CIA have been big, big news. But Leader Boehner has said produce evidence that you were misled or apologize. CIA Director Panetta has said that, you know, the CIA is not in the practice of misleading Congress.

What's...

PELOSI: I have made the statement that I'm going make on this. I don't have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comments. And what we are doing is staying on our course and not be distracted from it in this distractive mode. We're going forward in a bipartisan way for jobs, health care, and energy for our country. And on the subject that you asked, I've made the statement that I'm going to make. I won't have anything more to that about it.

QUESTION: (Inaudible)

PELOSI: I won't have anything more to say about it.

Another subject?

QUESTION: You have criticized the GOP, as you know, in the past, for the K Street project. And your friends, the Republicans now say that...

PELOSI: I'm sorry. What?

QUESTION: The K Street project.

PELOSI: Yes.

QUESTION: Your friends, the Republicans, now say that Democrats and you are resorting to money politics, developing allies to K Street to help raise money and cutting deals on bills. How do you respond?

PELOSI: That's just simply not true. I remind you that the Washington Post, at the time the Republicans were in power, said that what was happening on Capitol Hill was like a criminal syndicate run out of the office of the majority leader, Mr. DeLay at the time.

There's nothing -- we have drained that swamp. It's simply not happening.

Steny, do you have anything?

HOYER: Let me just say there is no K Street project, period.

QUESTION: You're going to travel over the break to China. I wondered if you could tell us about what your intentions are? And will you make a case for human rights while you're there? This is coming up on the 20th anniversary...

PELOSI: As you probably know, the speaker's office does not confirm any of the speaker's travel plans in that -- with other members as well. However, the Chinese government has announced the hospitality that it will be extending to us -- that they are extending hospitality. And the American embassy has confirmed that.

So I will associate myself with that characterization without going into any further detail about logistics.

PELOSI: But it is -- the purpose of the trip is to follow up on meetings we've had here with the representatives of the Chinese government on the subject of climate change and energy has how that relates to our economy. So that will be our agenda on the trip, and we look forward to a -- I'll be going with members in a bipartisan way, with members of the Select Committee on Climate Change and Energy Independence.

So that -- people who are going are, you know, experts and experienced in this field, have been having hearings for almost two and a half years on the subject. And we went to India last year -- India are China are crucial in how we go forward. So we want to -- we'll meet with the private sector, the -- of course, the officials of China and the non-governmental -- every element of -- the students as well to see what the possibilities are for us to -- as the secretary general of the U.N. was here yesterday.

He said -- he spoke at a Hopkins graduation, too, yesterday, except it was in Washington, D.C. while I was in Baltimore. And he said that -- I'm using the word -- I made this up -- seal the deal, he said. I've made up this phrase, seal the deal. So we're hoping that we're able to seal the deal by the time we go to Copenhagen.

But we have to see what the pockets possibilities are for common ground, learn from each other, as we go forward. So that is the subject.

QUESTION: Is that something you can see a vote coming up on any time soon?

PELOSI: Well, it's in the bill. It's in the energy bill. And we'd like it to come up as soon as it can come up.