House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) stumbled over the name of the Green New Deal Thursday when a reporter asked about the proposal during her weekly press conference.
The reporter asked about Republican efforts to push Pelosi to bring the Green New Deal up for a floor vote, forcing vulnerable Democrats to take a stand on the measure. Republicans argue the proposal will drive up energy and healthcare costs.
"I'm really impressed they care about health care, they who took aware the individual mandate, they who scores of times wanted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act," Pelosi shot back.
"As with all the initiatives that you're hearing about, that will go to committee," she said of the Green New Deal. "That has different committees because it has different pieces to it."
"I'm more excited about our Select Committee on Climate chaired by Cathy Castor of Florida, which will be having its hearings, evidence-based recommendations, some of which will be consistent with some of what's in the... in the... Green Deal, New Green Deal," she started in an apparent attempt to recall the proposal's name. "Some of it might be even beyond that."
Pelosi's forgetfulness, whether genuine or feigned, comes after she previously downplayed the radical Green New Deal in favor of other initiatives. "It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive," Pelosi said the week the plan was unveiled. "The Green Dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?" She said in the weeks after its release that the Green New Deal "goes beyond what our charge is" on climate change and has an agenda that is "not what we hope to achieve."