Jan 04 2007
An Historic Day: Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi
The times they are a changin’. Today, the Democrats will take control of the House for the first time in over a decade and they will elect the first woman speaker, Nancy Pelosi. This change is happening at a very interesting time; the country is in the middle of a war, the 2008 presidential campaigns are just getting started, a lame-duck president is in the White House, and separate parties control Congress and the White House.
The early statements indicate, there will be some battles ahead:
Pelosi, taking over as House speaker, promised immediate steps to ban gifts from lobbyists and to clamp down on travel funded by private interests. Democrats also planned to vote next week to raise the federal minimum wage, increase federal support for stem cell research and allow the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices on prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.
On the other side of the Capitol, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid _ a soft-spoken but tough inside player _ was taking the reins of the notoriously unwieldy Senate. He invited both Democrats and Republicans to a rare closed-door conference Thursday in the Old Senate Chamber in hopes of setting a bipartisan mood after years of political rancor.
The Democratic-led Congress also opens a new chapter in the presidency of Bush, who faces divided government as he cements his legacy in his final two years in the White House. He said Wednesday that he soon would propose a five-year plan to balance the budget, and he challenged Democrats to avoid passing “bills that are simply political” statements.
The next couple of years are going to represent significant change in the political landscape of this country. The first woman is being elected Speaker and “minority” candidates are now in serious consideration for the presidency. It truly seems that gender and race are being over-looked and we are evaluating the person and their positions. Perhaps I’m just being optimistic, but politics aside, this is a fabulous time for democracy.
