House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Sunday challenged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring middle-class tax credits up for an immediate vote to prove they wouldn’t be “held hostage” to tax cuts for the rich.

“I challenge the Speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor,” Pelosi told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, agreeing with Boehner that budget discussions shouldn’t wait until after the election.

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“Bringing middle-income tax cuts to floor now, passing those would help our economic recovery, would be a clear signal that the upper-end tax cuts for the wealthy will expire because middle-income tax cuts would not be held hostage to those.”

Pelosi also said that the Speaker’s threat to allow the government to default by blocking increases to the debt ceiling in order to force the Obama administration to accept deep budget cuts were “over the edge.”

“Here we go again,” she warned. “Last year, the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused 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. The Speaker wants to go over the edge.”

Watch this video from ABC’s This Week, broadcast May 20, 2012.

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(h/t: National Journal)