House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) expressed fears that if President Obama agreed to more spending cuts as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, the U.S. would become a "second-rate nation" in an interview on CBS' "This Morning."
"If you go beyond $1.6 trillion in spending cuts, pretty soon you have a blueprint for a second-rate nation," Pelosi said. "You have to reduce the deficit for sure."
"But if you go over the fiscal cliff, you have a recipe for a second-class nation, too," host Charlie Rose said.
Pelosi said that entitlement reform could be saved for later so a deal could be struck.
"But you can't go there," Pelosi said. "You can't go there. You can't go there. We're talking about two stages. The Speaker suggested two stages. Let's do something significant now, and then in the next stage we can address further entitlement review, as well as reform of the tax code. You can't do all of that in a two-week, three-week period, but you can do a down payment, set the stage, and go to the next stage, because we care more about saving the entitlements than the Republicans do. So we do want to reform them."
Full interview: