Nancy Pelosi called the House speaker's debt plan a 'job-killer.' | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Pelosi: Kiss your Medicare goodbye

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dialed up the rhetoric before Speaker John Boehner’s plan to raise the debt limit heads to the House floor for a vote, declaring it a “job-killer” and saying seniors could “kiss their Medicare good-bye.”

“If you believe in that the education of our children, the retirement of our seniors, the creation of jobs in a fiscally sound way, you couldn’t possibly vote for the bill that the Republicans are bringing to the floor today,” Pelosi said Thursday.


The speaker’s legislation, which slashes $917 billion over 10 years and increases the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit in two increments, is scheduled for a House vote on Thursday night.

House Democrats are expected to stay closely united against the Boehner legislation, with few – if any – defectors expected. If it passes and heads to the upper chamber, it faces opposition from all 53 Democratic-caucusing senators. Pelosi echoed those projections, saying she felt “very confident that if they’re going to have 217 votes … they’re going to have to be Republican votes.”

Now just five days away from the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline, Congress faces gridlock with dueling proposals from Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Pelosi said she hoped Congress could come together with the White House to resolve the stalemate.

“I’m hopeful that [once] everyone has made their statement, that we can again come together with the White House … [and] that we could come to terms as to how we go forward.”

She likened the current atmosphere to one that precipitated the vote before the Troubled Asset Relief Program, saying her Democrats worked together with a Republican president to try to avert an economic catastrophe.

“To see the lack of cooperation with [President Barack Obama], you have to ask the question, why?” Pelosi said. “Is it because they want to make the statement about the markets come tumbling down? That happened before and then finally we could pass the bill. Hopefully that is not the case.”