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VOA – WASHINGTON – Nancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would \u201cshow the power of the gavel.\u201dThis year, she laid it out for all to see. The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4 trillion government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party\u2019s plan to lower prescription drug costs. In between, she led a congressional delegation to Europe for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. And on Wednesday, she impeached the president. As the first year of Pelosi\u2019s second stint as speaker draws to a close \u2014 she is the only woman to hold the office, and the first speaker in 60 years to reclaim the gavel after losing it \u2014 the California Democrat took stock of whether she fulfilled her campaign trail promise.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump thinks so,\u201c Pelosi told The Associated Press during an interview Thursday at her office in the Capitol.<\/p>\n
\u201dHe just got impeached. He\u2019ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He\u2019s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I did nothing else, he saw the power of the gavel there,\u201d Pelosi told the AP. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t me, it was all of our members making their own decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not since an earlier era of leaders \u2014 like Sam Rayburn, whose name is on a building at the Capitol, or Newt Gingrich, who defined a political movement \u2014 has the House speaker wielded such influence.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has governed with force and authority,\u201d said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton.<\/p>\n
Zelizer said Pelosi has accomplished with Trump what others have not, which is to build a coalition strong enough to hold the president accountable, through impeachment, while also muscling through big bills. This, on top of what she did during her first term in the office.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is likely to go down in history as one of the most effective Speakers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Congress often runs toward a big year-end finish as lawmakers try to rack up accomplishments for the elections ahead. Lame-duck sessions, which this year is not, are often particularly robust as members capitalize on the narrow calendar window after the election but before the new Congress forms.<\/p>\n
Former Speaker Paul Ryan delivered the GOP\u2019s sweeping tax cuts package in December 2017. Former Speaker John Boehner tried to secure the fiscal cliff deal of taxing and spending at the end of 2012, and it was eventually approved at New Year\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Pelosi\u2019s earlier term as speaker, from 2007-2011, saw Democrats approve the signature achievement of the Obama era, the Affordable Care Act, during Christmas in 2009, though most of the action by that stage in the legislative process had moved in the Senate.<\/p>\n
She regained the gavel in January of this year, emerging from a contentious internal party election, after sweeping House Democrats to the majority in the 2018 midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Pelosi\u2019s ability to steer the agenda is shaped in part by her decades in office. She immodestly calls herself a master legislator, but there\u2019s truth in the brag \u2014 she brings more legislative experience to her job than those immediate predecessors. Particularly during the start of Obama\u2019s first term, when her party controlled both chambers, she ushered health care, financial reform and other major items to passage in what historians say was the most productive session of Congress since Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society years.<\/p>\n
Critics contend Pelosi strong-armed bills through the House, resulting in 2010 Democratic midterm election losses that cost the party its majority and her the gavel.<\/p>\n
Trump said Democrats are on a \u201csuicide march\u201d toward electoral defeat once again with impeachment.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrazy Nancy Pelosi\u2019s House Democrats have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,\u201d Trump told a rally crowd in battleground Michigan on the night he was being impeached.<\/p>\n
The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Pelosi\u2019s House isn\u2019t accomplishing much because she is wasting time on impeachment.<\/p>\n
But she notes that it\u2019s McConnell who calls himself the \u201cgrim reaper\u201d in his Senate graveyard of House-passed bills he refuses to bring forward for a vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time is not up,\u201d Pelosi said Thursday, a reminder that all those pieces of legislation carry over to 2020, because Congress runs in two-year cycles and this session doesn\u2019t conclude for another year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the election approaches, we would not want these to be election issues, we would like them to be accomplished legislation,\u201d she said. \u201cSo they either pass the bills or pay a price for not passing bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
The impeachment vote will be what history remembers most from this week. But passing the trade bill is a major win for both parties. And approving the government funding \u2014 Pelosi was negotiating the package in calls with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during her weekend diplomacy paying tribute to World War II veterans in Europe \u2014 counts too. Last year at this time, the government was heading toward what would become the nation\u2019s longest-ever federal shutdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VOA – WASHINGTON – Nancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would \u201cshow the power of the gavel.\u201dThis year, she laid it out for all to see. The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4 trillion government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}