Newsmaker

First US woman House speaker may be toppled

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-30 11:56

 

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi takes part in a group photo during the G8 Speakers of the Lower House meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Sept 10, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

Power, success

Congressional scholars say Pelosi "consolidated more power than any other speaker in modern history," Time noted. She used it to help give Obama what scholars call one of the most successful legislative records of any modern US president.

It includes passage of an $814 billion economic stimulus package, an overhaul of the US healthcare system, a crackdown on Wall Street and the biggest change in a half century in college loans to redirect billions of dollars in savings to students.

But these triumphs - many controversial and virtually all opposed by Republicans - were overshadowed by fiscal woes.

And Republicans seeking to take back the House have tied House Democrats to the economy and their unpopular speaker.

Pelosi says Democrats did what needed to be done after years of Bush's big-spending, tax-cutting policies, blamed for helping push the US into recession in late 2007.

"Let's continue to take America forward. We're not going back," Pelosi declared in a recent campaign speech.

In November 2006, with Pelosi leading the charge, Democrats won the House, ending 12 years of Republican rule. She was elected speaker by colleagues two months later.

"This is an historic moment for the Congress and for the women of this country," Pelosi said at the time. "It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years."

Having first learned politics as a child from her big-city mayor father, Baltimore's Thomas "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro, Pelosi quickly went to work.

In the House's first 100 hours, she won approval of bills to reduce the gap between rich and poor, including one to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

She also cranked up the pressure on Bush to change course in the Iraq war. But Bush, over Democratic objections, ordered a troop surge in 2007.

In August, Obama, who replaced Bush in January 2009, declared an end to the seven-year US combat mission in Iraq and promised to focus on the economy.

But the US jobless rate has remained stubbornly high, at 9.6 percent, keeping his party in political peril.

While Democrats may lose the House, Pelosi seems certain to be elected to a 13th term from California. If she is no longer speaker, however, she may resign from Congress.