House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday challenged Speaker John Boehner to move forward with cutting middle class tax rates and blasted him for calling for matching cuts before agreeing to raise the debt-ceiling limit.
"Last year, just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused us to, our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way," said Pelosi on ABC's "This Week."
"The speaker wants to go over the edge," she added. "We have cut a trillion, over a trillion dollars in the Budget Control Act since the Budget Control Act of last year. There has to be more reductions but we have to have revenue and have to have growth."
Pelosi agreed with host George Stephanopoulos that lawmakers could not wait until after the election to deal with the budgetary issues.
"I challenge the Speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor," she said.
"This election, if it is about the economy, the president will make his case that he has been a job creator from day one. The president's record of job creation, taking us from a deep recession -- almost a depression -- to a hopeful place versus whatever the Republicans will propose. But they have stood in the way of every job piece of legislation that would be significant in that regard," Pelosi added.
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The Democratic leader said she believed Democrats' had a "dead even" chance of retaking the House if the election were held today.
"I think it would be dead even," she said. "About, three-third you know, a 30 percent chance that they will lose or something. But I think it's bigger than that.” Pelosi said she believed about “75” House GOP seats were in play.
"I feel pretty good about where we are," added the Democratic leader.
Asked about the prospect of returning for her 26th year in the House as Speaker again, Pelosi said she just wanted to "come back with the Democrats in the majority."
Pelosi also defended a DCCC letter which sought to fundraise off a pro-Romney super-PAC's proposal to link President Obama to his former pastor, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during the campaign.
While the super-PAC rejected the proposed strategy and the Romney campaign was quick to denounce the proposal, Democrats are highlighting the incident to raise funds and rally Obama supporters.
Pelosi defended the fundraising appeal, noting that it quoted comments Romney himself had previously made linking Obama to Wright.
"They quoted what he said in February, what he said just this past February... about Rev. Wright. And then they said to him, 'Well, this seems different from what you're saying now. Do you stand by what you said in February?" And he said, 'I don't know what I said in February but I stand by it.' But what he said in February was very similar to what they were saying about Rev. Wright." Pelosi said.
Pelosi said she had "no regrets" about the fundraising email.
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"Why would we have any regrets? He stood by his remarks in February. So I think maybe it might be useful to see what he said in February and see that he stands by those remarks. But that's not what the election's about. The election is about three things: jobs, jobs and jobs. This election is not about Rev. Wright," she added.
"I’m not sure which is worse, him listening to Rev. Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation," Romney had said in February when asked by conservative radio and television host Sean Hannity about comments from Obama that the United States was not a "Christian nation."
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