House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday said she can’t answer for why pork-barrel items snuck into the debt and spending bill that passed Congress late Thursday, but said the press should stop focusing on that and instead look at the broader debt fight.

“What difference does it make?” Mrs. Pelosi said when she was asked repeatedly about the items, which include a $174,000 payment to the widow of the late multimillionaire Sen. Frank Lautenberg and a $2 billion maximum price increase on a dam project on the Ohio River that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had supported as an earmark in previous years.

The House Democratic leader said there were other reasons to be upset with the bill, including that it doesn’t spend as much as she wanted. But she said focusing on pork projects was missing the fight.

“If you want to have an objection to the bill, there are bigger things,” she said.

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