PELOSI’S FIRST YEAR AS HOUSE SPEAKER MARKED BY LITTLE CHANGE ON WAR
Zachary Coile
San Francisco Chronicle
Dec 23 2007
USA
The last day of the House’s 2007 session last week summed up the
turbulence of Nancy Pelosi’s history-making first year as House
speaker.
In the morning, she beamed a wide smile as she stood beside President
Bush while he signed an energy bill with the first major increase in
fuel economy standards in 30 years.
But by Wednesday afternoon, her party was facing two of its biggest
defeats. To keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting 20 million
Americans next year, Democrats had to abandon their pledge not to
pass any legislation that increased the deficit.
Then Pelosi, whose party took control of Congress pledging to change
course in Iraq, watched the House approve $70 billion in war funding,
part of a budget deal that avoided a government shutdown. Members of
her own party denounced it as a capitulation to the White House.
"The war in Iraq is the biggest disappointment for us, the inability
to stop the war," Pelosi told reporters in a group interview in her
ceremonial office just hours before the war vote. She quickly pegged
the blame on congressional Republicans.
The Democrats’ failure to shift the war’s direction, their No. 1
priority for the year, has eclipsed many of the party’s successes on
other issues, including raising the minimum wage for the first time
in a decade and passing the strongest ethics and lobbying reforms
since Watergate.
And Bush, despite his lame-duck status, outflanked Democrats in
the end-of-year budget fight – forcing them to accept his number,
$555 billion in domestic spending, and funding for Iraq – simply by
refusing to yield.
Asked about the setbacks last week, Pelosi, as she has all year,
flashed her most optimistic smile and refused to be drawn into the
criticism.
"Almost everything we’ve done has been historic," she said.
But if Pelosi is smiling, so are Republicans. They began the year
defeated and demoralized. But they have since shown surprising unity,
backing the president on the war and finding new purpose in blocking
Democrats’ spending initiatives.
"We’ve stood up to them every step of the way," House Minority Leader
John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week.
The tense mood among Democrats in the session’s final weeks was a
marked contrast from the festive first weeks of the new Congress, when
Pelosi was sworn in as the nation’s first female speaker, surrounded
by children on the House floor. She promised to lead Congress in a
new direction.
Democrats took off on a legislative sprint in which they quickly
approved their "Six for ’06" agenda including raising the minimum
wage, cutting interest rates on student loans, backing federally
funded embryonic stem cell research, and revoking tax breaks for
oil companies.
But the bills bogged down in the Senate, where the Democrats’ 51-49
majority is so thin it allowed Republicans to determine what would be
passed. Democrats have struggled to get the 60 votes needed to overcome
filibusters, which are now an almost daily experience in the Senate.
"Pelosi suffered the same ailment that (former Republican House
Speaker) Newt Gingrich suffered from when he became speaker:
Senate-itis," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute. "A lot of what the House accomplished
this year either sat in the Senate or got eviscerated by the Senate.
What you are left with is not nearly as robust as what you started
with."
Even the energy bill, the Democrats’ crowning achievement, was
stripped of a broad tax package and a renewable electricity standard
that would have pushed the nation toward wind and solar power. Still,
the fuel economy piece alone is expected to save 2.3 million barrels
of oil a day by 2020 – more than the United States currently imports
from the Persian Gulf.
Pelosi had to make some painful trade-offs. To get the minimum
wage hike signed, Democrats had to attach it to a $120 billion war
spending bill.
Other elements of her agenda fell victim to Bush’s veto pen. Congress
twice passed a bill with bipartisan support to expand the state
children’s health insurance program to cover 4 million more children.
Bush twice vetoed it, forcing Democrats to settle for an 18-month
extension of the current program.
Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid,
D-Nev., held countless votes on war measures setting timetables
for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and other restrictions on Bush’s
policy. But their strategy counted on Republicans switching sides –
and very few did.
"I didn’t foresee that," Pelosi acknowledged. "We thought they would
reflect the wishes and views of their constituents."
Some critics called the assumption naive. Anti-war groups have urged
her to use Congress’ power of the purse to simply cut off funds for
the war, but Pelosi opposes the move, which many Democrats fear would
be seen as undermining the troops. Instead the party has pushed for
a "responsible redeployment" – meaning funding the war, but with
strings attached.
In October, Pelosi’s ally and the House’s top appropriator, David Obey,
D-Wis., said Democrats would draw a line in the sand: They would refuse
to pass any more war funding without a timeline for withdrawal. But
by last week, with the budget impasse threatening to shut down the
government, Democrats dropped the strategy.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, a founding member of the Out of Iraq
Caucus, said the Democrats’ mistake was not to force the threat to
deny funds earlier in the year.
"I wish she could have been bolder," Woolsey said, while acknowledging
that Pelosi had to mediate between competing views in the caucus. "If
we had started that earlier, we could have built on it until it
reached a crescendo, because it’s what the American people want."
The Democrats were left in a weak bargaining position at the end of
the year. They needed to pass 11 spending bills, but Republicans and
Bush demanded the $70 billion for the war in return. The president also
held firm on his spending limits. If the impasse led to a government
shutdown, Pelosi knew her party would receive much of the blame. So
she agreed to the deal, with the concession that Democrats were able
to preserve money for their priorities, including home heating aid
for the poor and health care for veterans.
"We made it very clear months ago we were not going to shut down the
government," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, one of Pelosi’s top
lieutenants. "Tragically, that put the president in the driver’s seat."
Miller said the fight over the war has obscured the progress Democrats
made on other fronts, including cutting interest rates on loans for
college students and passing a huge increase in veterans’ benefits. He
said Pelosi worked tirelessly to get the energy bill over the finish
line.
"At the beginning of the year, people said we had no chance of getting
an energy bill," Miller said. "This was a tour de force for her."
Pelosi also showed she was willing to buck some of her party’s most
powerful members to get her way. She went head-to-head with Rep. John
Dingell, D-Mich., Detroit automakers’ top ally, over raising fuel
economy standards – and won. She pushed through an ethics reform bill
that her friend Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., called "total crap."
"Some of her colleagues when they took back Congress said, ‘That
reform message worked to get us elected, but now it’s our turn.’ "
Ornstein said. "That has not been her attitude and her approach,
and I give her credit for that."
Pelosi had clumsy moments, too. She pushed hard for a resolution
denouncing Turkey’s mass killings of Armenians during World War I as
genocide, only to reverse course when it sparked a diplomatic fight,
with Turkey threatening to reduce logistical support to U.S. troops
in Iraq.
Republicans say she has reneged on a promise to run a more open
House. Following a pattern set by the GOP when it ran the House for 12
years, Democrats have often rammed bills through, giving Republicans
few opportunities to amend them.
"It’s hard to work together when you’re not even invited into the
room," said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas.
But Pelosi’s supporters say Republicans haven’t been willing to
compromise and have mostly tried to block Democrats from racking
up accomplishments.
"The Republicans have frustrated us because they want to run a
negative campaign saying the Democrats didn’t accomplish anything,"
said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles.
The bickering in Congress, over the war and other issues, has taken
a toll. When Democrats took power, Congress had an approval rating
of 35 percent, but it’s since dipped into the low 20s, according to
the Gallup poll.
Pelosi is already crafting a strategy for next year, when the
presidential race is likely to take some of the spotlight off
Congress. With the war debate at an impasse, she’s planning to push
a series of measures on health care, the economy, the mortgage crisis
and global warming.
If Democrats can’t win on these issues, at the very least they can draw
sharp distinctions with Republicans leading up to the fall elections,
she said.
"One of the reasons we were able to be successful with the energy
bill is that this is something we took to the American people," she
said. "That is what we have to do next. We have to go public with
many of these issues."
News from the presidential campaign. A18
Pelosi’s first year San Francisco Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi made
history as the nation’s first female House speaker in January, but
she’s had a bumpy first year marked by successes and failures.
Biggest successes — Passed an energy bill raising fuel economy
standards for the first time in 30 years, the equivalent today of
taking 28 million cars off the road by 2020.
— Approved a major cut in interest rates on student loans to make
college more affordable.
— Passed the strongest ethics reforms since Watergate, banning gifts
from lobbyists and making earmarks more transparent.
— Secured the largest increase in veterans’ benefits in history.
— Increased the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, from
$5.15 an hour to $7.25 over three years.
Biggest failures — Despite repeated votes, failed to enact any major
changes in Iraq war policy.
— Tried to expand the state children’s health insurance program to
cover 4 million more children, but was blocked by President Bush and
House Republicans.
— Sparked a diplomatic fight with Turkey by pushing a resolution
condemning the country’s mass killing of Armenians during World War I.
— Abandoned the party’s "pay-as-you-go" budget rules to avoid letting
the alternative minimum tax hit 20 million Americans.
— Accepted Bush’s spending limits in the end-of-the-year budget
fight to avoid shutting down the federal government.