Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Pelosi's top priorities since becoming speaker include limiting U.S. involvement in Iraq, addressing global climate change and energy issues and passing landmark ethics legislation. She also pushed major health-care reform through the House in November 2009, 220 to 215, though the overall effort is still stalled.

As part of her "100 Hours" agenda at the start of the 110th Congress, House Democrats quickly approved a minimum wage hike, the remaining 9/11 commission recommendations, public disclosure of lawmakers pet projects known as earmarks and major ethics legislation that outright banned gifts and meals from lobbyists and restricted travel from outside groups.

In March 2008, after a series of congressional scandals and dismal approval ratings, Pelosi backed the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics, the first independent body to have the authority to launch an ethics probe of Members of Congress.

The Economy

Pelosi was a loyal Obama lieutenant when it came to passage of his mammoth $787 billion economic stimulus package in February 2009, despite the Senate scaling back spending from the House version. No House Republicans supported the deal.

Pelosi also worked with Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to craft a politically-palatable $700 billion bailout that Congress approved in fall 2008.

Pelosi may be remembered for cooperating with rather than antagonizing the Bush administration on economic issues. In February 2008, she brokered a deal with Bush and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) to provide taxpayers with rebate checks in order to jumpstart the flailing economy.

Health-Care Reform

On Nov. 7, 2009, Pelosi scored a major victory when the House passed, 220 to 215, health-care reform legislation with a robust public option that depended on raising taxes to defray costs. But she did so by compromising with some of the House's more conservative Democrats, who insisted they get a chance to vote on banning federal funds from being used to pay for abortions. The plan also required individuals to carry insurance.

But the Senate plan, passed in December 2009, didn't contain a public option and instead levied a tax on so-called "Cadillac" health-care plans (those with premium benefits) rather than wealthier individuals. The two bills were stalled in Congress in early 2010.

The House fight to that vote was long and winding and required the speaker to make other pragmatic concessions.

After more than a year of legislative wrangling, the House passed the Senate version of health-care reform on March 21, 2010, clearing the way for the Senate to approve a package of amendments insisted on by the lower chamber with a simple majority (using a process known as reconciliation).

The $940 billion bill requires most Americans to carry health insurance and require that insurance companies cover them, regardless of pre-existing conditions. It establishes a national insurance exchange allowing Americans to compare and purchase insurance plans. The bill will be paid for by increasing taxes on well-off Medicare recipients and by taxing premium insurance plans. By the end of the bill's 10-year roll-out, 32 million uninsured Americans will have health coverage and the deficit will be $138 billion lower, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.

Pelosi spoke to the Washington Post's Lois Romano in late July 2009:

The Environment and Trade

In June 2009, Pelosi scored a significant victory when she spearheaded House passage, 219 to 212, of a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions through cap-and-trade. The legislation, authored by Reps. Waxman and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), was a top priority of the Obama White House. But it faces an uphill battle in the Senate.

Pelosi has taken the reins of environmental reform since becoming speaker. One of her first tasks was sidelining former House Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). Fearing that he was too tied to auto interests in the Detroit district he represents to be a change agent, Pelosi boldly established a competing panel on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by ally Markey. But she was ultimately forced to back off and declare that the new panel had no legislative authority. In December 2007, she and Dingell buried the hatchet to enact the first new fuel efficiency standards for auto makers in 25 years. But Pelosi angered some environmentalists by allowing a vote in fall 2008 on offshore drilling in response to high gas prices.

Pelosi has held firm in her general opposition to trade deals negotiated by the Bush administration, killing in one fell swoop action on the Colombia free trade agreement by revoking the administration's fast-track authority when it sent the deal to the Hill in 2008.

Iraq and FISA

But Pelosi earned the ire of liberal activists when she could not lead Democrats to a substantial policy change on the Iraq war. She wholeheartedly supported her longtime ally, Rep. John Murtha's (D-Pa.), after his November 2005 speech calling for a "redeployment," or withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But once Democrats were in charge, she succumbed to the reality that Congress was relatively powerless to stop the war.

Her bid to install Murtha as her chief lieutenant failed miserably; Murtha lost to Hoyer, her old nemesis in the contest for Majority Leader, 149 to 86. Hoyer had taken a more moderate Iraq position.

Meanwhile, efforts to include a timeline for troop withdrawals in legislation funding the war repeatedly stalled in the Senate. In June 2008, however, Congressional Democrats did manage to get Bush to swallow a supplemental war spending package that included an extension of unemployment benefits and new education benefits for veterans.

Liberals were also upset by what they saw as an accommodation with President Bush by Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) with Bush on warrantless wiretapping.

The House ultimately passed a bill to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court with many of Bush's prerogatives intact, including retroactive protection for telecom companies. Hard-core liberals were also incensed that Pelosi did not pursue impeachment of Bush and Vice President Cheney for the faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. Pelosi, instead, buried impeachment motions authored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), at the House Judiciary Committee. Liberal outrage over the inaction prompted anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, to challenge Pelosi for re-election as an independent in November 2008.

CIA Controversy

In spring 2009, Pelosi got in a heated battle with the CIA, led by her former California House colleague Leon Panetta, over when she knew that harsh interrogation tactics like waterboarding were being employed against high-value terrorist detainees. Republicans used the issue as a cudgel against the speaker and some, including ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), called for Pelosi's ouster.

The CIA maintains it informed Pelosi about those tactics in September 2002, but Pelosi insisted she did not know about waterboarding specifically until early 2003, and the CIA admitted its records might not be accurate.

"The only mention of waterboarding in the [September 2002] briefing was that it was not being employed," Pelosi said on May 14, 2009. Pelosi said CIA briefers had given her "inaccurate and incomplete information." She added about the CIA: "They mislead us all the time."

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