What Others Are Saying:The Accomplishments of the 110th Congress
August 9, 2007
Politico, August 6, 2007:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scored some major wins in the final few weeks before the recess, including pushing through a major rewrite of congressional ethics and lobbying laws, legislation to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations and an energy reform bill that includes new taxes on oil companies while giving tax breaks for renewable fuels and conservation. The House also adopted its version of all 12 annual spending bills, including the $459 billion Defense appropriations bill, which was approved late Saturday night by a 395-13 margin."
Washington Post, July 26, 2007:
"'They can send their Members home crowing about their accomplishments, and they've done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do,' [Rep. Ray] LaHood (R-Ill) said."
"Democrats who control Congress headed into a summer recess having passed several high-profile bills from raising the minimum wage to bolstering U.S. security and expanding children's health care. Their top priority -- ending the Iraq war -- remains frustratingly unfulfilled. But the Democrats who took over in January were able to go home early on Sunday for a month-long break having won more support in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for bringing combat troops home by early next year, marking a significant turnaround from last year."
"Some nonpartisan observers agreed Democrats had reason to boast. 'Democrats have had a good run legislatively over the past few weeks and that does help them going into the recess,' said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia."
"Congress's Democratic majority made major strides toward implementing its domestic agenda before going home, but will face a large hurdle when lawmakers return at summer's end: President Bush. Farm, lobbying reform, energy, education and child health insurance bills all advanced in a volatile 10-day march before the recess, establishing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a legislative player."
"Besides their success on increasing the federal minimum wage, ethics and lobbying, and the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, Democrats have moved forward with initiatives to expand health insurance for children through the State Children's Health Insurance Program and to shift U.S. energy policy away from reliance on fossil fuels...they have helped focus the war debate on the question of when, not if, U.S. forces will begin pulling out."
Letter of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, 7/25/07:
"I have long been and continue to be an advocate of congressional oversight as a fundamental element of our system of government. I also have publicly expressed my belief that congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive, appropriate and necessary."
"They did however chalk up a string of domestic goals, raising the minimum wage, enshrined into law the recommendations of the commission into the September 11 attacks in 2001, passed an ethics bill, improved healthcare for children and passed energy reforms."
Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group, 8/8/07:
"... Pelosi outlined a domestic policy agenda so elegant in its symmetrical pursuit of both long-range change (an attack on global warming) and lunch-bucket progress (a bumper crop of 'green-collar jobs' to be created from investing in new energy technologies) that you begin to believe she is of a rare species among practiced Washington hands: That is, her political instincts come from somewhere well beyond the Beltway."