House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she is open to cutting the corporate tax rate.
In a taped interview with the NewsHour's Judy Woodruff to be aired tonight, Pelosi said she would be willing to lower the corporate tax rate as part of a comprehensive reform package that would close other loopholes.
Pelosi: We're all for putting everything on the table, talking about simplification, talking about fairness, or perhaps lowering the corporate rate if we close loopholes, and some of the things that we have done have very good for small businesses. We've probably passed 16 tax considerations favorable to small businesses. But the decision here and the distinction here is do you want to give a tax cut to all Americans which creates jobs, or do you want to hold that tax cut hostage in giving an extra tax cut to the high end which will take is $700 billion into debt? We're not going to do that.
Pelosi took the opportunity to slam Republican obstructionism, declining to comment on possible directions for House leadership in the event that Republicans take back the House. "I'm not predicating any conversation on the basis of Democrats not winning the majority," she said.
When asked about the failure of the House to vote on tax cuts before adjourning, Pelosi vowed to pass tax cuts before the end of the year, adding that "members are fully prepared to go home and talk about what they support and it doesn't require a vote to take a position on it."
Pelosi said it didn't bother her that a number of Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from her on the campaign trail, particularly over issues of spending. Democrats take pride in being independent, she said, unlike so many Republicans who just tow the party line.
Pelosi: Sometimes Washington gets used to a rubber stamp Congress, which was the very homogeneous Congress of the Republican. We're very diverse in opinion, gender, generation, geography, philosophy, and the rest ... and some members did not vote for some of the bills, and that's their record, and that's what they go out and say. I just want them to win. They know their districts; they are great communicators, very eloquent communicators to their own constituents, and they are the -- will be the independent representatives. I say to them, your job description and your title are one and the same. Representative.
So they run on who they are. They don't run on -- and what this is about, again, it just takes it to the middle class. It's not about me, it's about the middle class. They know that. That's what unites us.
Watch an excerpt from the interview below: