Pelosi: No jobless aid means no deal

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Democrats wouldn’t support a budget agreement without a reauthorization of federal unemployment benefits.

“We can’t support a budget agreement that doesn’t include UI [unemployment insurance],” Pelosi said Thursday at a Democratic hearing on the issue.

“It would undermine who we are as a country and strike at the heart of what you bring to America,” she said to several unemployed workers who testified at the hearing. Rep Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Pelosi’s demand was not helpful.

{mosads}”I don’t think adding an item like that at the last minute is particularly helpful to negotiators trying to get a deal,” the Oklahoma Republican said Thursday.

The leaders of the House and Senate budget conference, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), have been working on a deal that would replace a part of the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.

The two don’t have a deal yet, and they are running out of time ahead of a Dec. 13 deadline.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) struck a pessimistic note, saying Ryan did not have a deal when he updated Boehner on Thursday.

Read more from The Hill.