On Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had a message for progressives unsure about her commitment to economic equality.
Pelosi was speaking at the Progressive Caucus Strategy Center Summit when she said her top motivation is bringing children out of poverty. She then compared herself to armored warriors who "eat nails for breakfast."
"My motivation is: one in five children in America lives in poverty. I can’t handle it. I just can't handle it," she said. "So every day I eat nails for breakfast and don a suit of armor to go out there and fight for the kids, because that is about everything, that is about the future."
Pelosi's net worth is estimated at more than $100 million, largely on account of her venture capitalist husband Paul Pelosi, and she owns three luxury homes.
In her remarks, Pelosi said Republicans’ budget proposal to provide more safety to schools was immoral because it took money out of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title I provides additional funding to schools that have a higher percentage of students who live below the poverty line.
"We do not have shared values," she said of Democrats and Republicans. "This is different. We used to have shared values and different approaches. [Now] we don’t even have shared values."
She then said the Democrats need to promote their economic message of a "Better Deal," which has been "road-tested," in order to win elections in 2018. Previously in her speech, she hit back at critics who found the "Better Deal" agenda uninspiring, telling them they "should be inspired by the unity of it."