You go, girl: Nancy draws line in the sand after women excluded from budget talks

The good ole boys reached an 11th hour federal budget deal a week ago, but as they say, “It’s not over ’til it’s over.” Both houses of Congress have to pass the deal, and President Obama has to sign it.

According to the Huffington Post, all hell was breaking loose today (Thursday, April 14) in the US House of Representatives with Teapublicans on the far right, true progressive Democrats like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Raul Grijalva, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus on the left, and Speaker John Boehner is in the eye of the storm. (Personally, I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.) Apparently, both the right and the left were not happy with the deal– for different reasons.

Pelosi– House Minority Leader and the most powerful Democrat in the House– and all other Congressional women were excluded from the good ole boys budget meetings. (This explains how so many anti-women and anti-family riders even got a hearing!) From the Huffington Post…

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will likely need votes from Democrats to pass the budget deal, which was hammered out at the eleventh hour to prevent a government shutdown last week. Both Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were left out of negotiations over government funding.

McConnell kept away from negotiations partly because he and Boehner agreed it would be better to exclude Pelosi, said a source who is familiar with what occurred.

In the end, no women were given a voice in the final negotiations, which took place between high-level staffers for Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House. The final deal involved a major battle over women’s health, including debates about blocking government funds to Planned Parenthood and banning the District of Columbia for using its own tax revenue to fund abortions for low-income women.

Pelosi has criticized the House GOP for including women’s health in the spending deal. But she declined on Thursday to announce publicly how she plans to vote.

“As was pretty evident, the House Democrats were not a part of that agreement,” she said, adding that she doesn’t “have any idea” how many Democrats will vote against it. [Emphasis added.]