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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) spoke Friday at an LGBT rights event at the Pride Center at Equality Park of South Florida, where she touted how liberals in the Democratic Party only voted for the nation's defense spending bill for fiscal year 2011 so they could repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
"Don't tell anybody I told you this," Pelosi said, before explaining how she was able to get liberal Democrats onboard to support the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the annual federal law that specifies the Defense Department's budget and expenditures.
Pelosi described how in 2010 Democrats put an amendment into the NDAA for fiscal year 2011 that would repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the U.S. policy on homosexuals or bisexuals serving in the military for nearly two decades. She said Democrats had very few Republican votes to pass the bill with the amendment attached, so she had to approach the liberal faction of the Democratic Party, which she said never votes for the defense bill.
"I went to my Barney Franks, [Rep.] Barbara Lee [D., Calif.], [Rep.] John Lewis [D., Ga.], you name it, the liberal contingent in which I'm a member" Pelosi said. "And I said to them, ‘We are making history today.'"