Nancy Pelosi’s Policy Agenda, Summed Up in These 10 Quotes

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi engaged in an hour-long defense of President Obama’s budget and liberal priorities at the Brookings Institution yesterday.

Throughout her speech and a Q&A that followed with host E.J. Dionne, Pelosi offered the audience interesting quotes and takes from her perch as the top Democrat in the U.S. House.

Here are 10 that caught our attention.

1) Pelosi’s view of the Affordable Care Act: “Even if there were no other reason to pass [Obamacare], even if everyone was happy with his or her health care insurance or care, we still would have had to pass the bill, because the cost of health care in America was unsustainable.”

2) On energy policy: “In terms of American innovation, we substantially bolstered our investments, fueling basic research, and driving forward innovative energy technologies. … Knowing that our reliance on foreign fossil fuels is unhealthy for our economy, our national security, and the air our children breathe, Democrats acted to make America energy independent.”

3) “Laissez, laissez, laissez-faire,” Pelosi said, as she implied that it was that and other “radical trickle-down” policies that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

4) On Democrats’ efforts on TARP in the midst of the 2008 crisis: “The first of Democratic efforts are apparent. We provided a lifeline to save the auto industry and a million jobs.”

5) “It was a messaging problem,” Pelosi said of the Obama’s economic stimulus, the auto industry bailout and Obamacare.

6) “No one begrudges your success,” Pelosi said, hitting back at Rep. Paul Ryan’s “envy economics” comment, claiming that Democrats don’t believe in class warfare.

7) “When we moved to something called shareholder capitalism, it went to 300 times,” Pelosi said about employee-to-CEO pay. “We just don’t want a rising tide lifting all yachts, we want it to lift all boats.”

8) On Republicans and the role of government: “The debate of government’s role has been the debate since the beginning. The Republicans don’t support governance. They don’t believe in science, and they don’t believe in Obama.”

9) Abortion had “nothing to do” with Obamacare.

10) On the current debate over vaccines: “I’m sympathetic to the concerns and I’ve met and spent many hours and tried to facilitate with families who have had concerns about vaccines be it autism or otherwise. It is a public health issue, and the fact is, is that children should be vaccinated.”