Nancy Pelosi, Democrats relinquish control

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hand her gavel to incoming Speaker John Boehner today, ending two years of Democratic rule in Washington and beginning a period of divided government dominated by Republican promises of budget austerity.

Pelosi, 70, whom the GOP pilloried as a San Francisco liberal, will lead Democrats as a shrunken and much more liberal minority. She will return to her former role as a barbed thorn in the side of the GOP, and is likely to become the nation's liberal-in-chief.

President Obama has already moved toward the center. The Senate remains under nominal Democratic control, but has 12 new Republicans. Adding to its conservative cast, 21 Democrats, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and several swing-state moderates, face re-election in 2012 with Obama. Asked Tuesday to reflect on her four-year tenure as the nation's first female speaker, Pelosi replied, "I don't look back. I only look forward." dominican republic divorce

At her final news conference as speaker, Pelosi promised to be a "willing partner" with Republicans if they focus on "solving problems," specifically job creation, deficit reduction and "strengthening the middle class."
Defends health reform

But she made it clear that she would be an unwilling partner if Republicans attacked programs favored by Democrats. She defended her chief legacy, a landmark expansion of health care, which House Republican leaders said they would swiftly vote to repeal. It will be a symbolic vote; repeal would not pass the Senate, nor would Obama sign it.

But a real fight lay just ahead, probably in March, as the historic freshman class of 87 House Republicans, roughly half of whom are Tea Party allies, confronts legislation to raise the $14.3 trillion federal debt ceiling or face something close to a government shutdown.

The fight will shape the ground for the 2012 presidential race and looks eerily similar to the 1995 budget impasse between President Bill Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"The last thing a freshman who won with a vigorous Tea Party presence in his or her district wants to do is cast a vote to increase the debt by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars," said Mike Franc, head of government affairs for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

House Republicans want to reduce domestic spending to pre-Obama levels. If they exclude defense, Medicare and Medicaid, that would mean $100 billion in cuts elsewhere. California is relying on federal funding for its big, new high-speed rail project between Bakersfield and Fresno, which could be a target.

Rep. Barbara Lee, an Oakland Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, wants to take aim at the defense budget - especially weapons systems - to protect housing, job-training and other domestic programs.

"It's going to be a tough fight," Lee said. "I think we have some Republican support; I know Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) supports that and I know other Republicans do, but we've got to have a stronger coalition. We have to have critical mass in the country to begin to understand that defense can be cut without jeopardizing our national security."

Pelosi may find herself in increasing conflict with Obama, who since the Democrats' devastating midterm election losses agreed to extend temporarily the Bush-era tax cuts and began populating his economic team with moderate former Clinton aides.
Noble warrior

By contrast, Pelosi has become an icon to the left, Franc said.

"If they could, they would have her up there on Mount Rushmore. She shepherded through things that they fought for for decades and decades and decades, arguably for 100 years in the form of the health care legislation.

"I think her base will see her as a noble warrior deserving of all the accolades that come with it," Franc said. "And she's got a leaner, meaner, more ideologically coherent caucus to work with."

In the minority, Pelosi will be free to attack proposals and show the worst side of budget cuts without the responsibility to pose an alternative, much as Republicans attacked Democrats for the past two years.

While deficits are unpopular, spending cuts are not. Jobs and the economy remain top voter concerns, especially among independents who decide elections.

"There's a big chunk of the country that's non-ideological and is prepared to just keep whacking whichever party they see as not doing the job, not honestly trying to solve problems," said Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Voters care less about liberal or conservative economic orthodoxies than they care about whether unemployment went up or down, he said.

"They want outcomes," Fiorina said. Independents were "sick of the Bush administration in 2006 and 2008 and were really sick of Democrats not delivering in 2010, and they're fully prepared" to vote in new representatives if the economy does not improve fast.