Articles

"Pelosi's initial agenda, completed Thursday, included measures with wide popular support: increasing the minimum wage, broadening stem cell research, allowing government bargaining on Medicare drug prices, cutting student loan costs, putting in place terrorism-fighting recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission and rolling back energy company tax breaks."

"A new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows positive views of Pelosi, 66, climbed over the past month and are considerably higher than the marks Americans gave one of her highly publicized predecessors, Republican Newt Gingrich, in the first weeks of his tenure as speaker in 1995."

"Something odd happened on Capitol Hill this week. Something that seemed to start out as a publicity stunt -- the House Democratic leadership's 100-hour agenda -- actually turned into a ...qualified success."

"The 315 to 116 vote could begin the process of ending Congress's longest stretch without a minimum-wage increase since the mandatory minimum was created in 1938. In the past decade, inflation has depleted the value of the minimum wage to the lowest level in more than 50 years."

"Anti-terror legislation sailed through the House on Tuesday, the first in a string of measures designed to fulfill campaign promises made by Democrats last fall."

"The irony of the last six years, a period when 'conservatives' ran Congress and the White House, is that Washington has run six consecutive budget deficits and added $3 trillion to the federal debt. That's bad for the economy, in the long run, and unfair to future taxpayers. Maybe the 'liberals' can do better."

'I wanted to come back here to say thank you to all of you, for the spirit of community that has always strengthened and inspired my life,' Pelosi said. 'Every step that I took to the speakership began in this neighborhood.'

"For Pelosi, yesterday's election was not only the culmination of a long climb by women through the ranks of Congress but also the personal triumph of a hard-nosed partisan, a grandmother of six who methodically plotted the Democrats' return to power after more than a decade in the minority."