Pelosi has 'no regrets' on last day as speaker (AP)

Boehner replaces Pelosi as Speaker
The outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hands the gavel of office to her successor John Boehner. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Republican John Boehner was elected the new Speaker of the House today, marking a shift to the right in Washington as he replaced the first woman in the post, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi. The meeting of the 112th Congress, with the Republicans in control of the House and having slashed the Democratic majority in the Senate, is a long way from the heady ...

112th Congress officially sworn in, Boehner elected Speaker of the House
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011, marks the opening of the 112th Congress, with Republicans officially becoming the majority in the House of Representatives.  Among the new class of elected members is Raul Labrador, from Idaho's First Congressional District. John Boehner was officially elected Speaker of the House with 241 votes.  Nancy Pelosi was selected to be the Minority Leader, however, 19 Democrats voted against her. “The American People have humbled us. They have refreshed our...

Why Democrats Should Not Be Sad
It would easy for Democrats to be sad. Watching Republican John Boehner ascend the rostrum in the House of Representatives and accept the speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi, after all, could be downright depressing. To be sure, in most ways, I'd have been happier if the 112th Congress opened on Wednesday with Pelosi beginning a third term as speaker. But that is not to be. Indeed, as a progressive Democrat, I expected to be more morose, myself. But I find I'm not. I've come to realize that a Re...

Area Congressman John Boehner becomes speaker of the House
WASHINGTON – Dayton-area Congressman John Boehner was elected speaker of the House on Wednesday, sealing newfound Republican power-sharing in Congress and drawing the curtain on the history-making Nancy Pelosi era at the helm. Cheers broke out among GOP lawmakers on the House floor as Boehner, a Veteran lawmaker from West Chester Twp., defeated Pelosi in the roll call for speaker. His rise to the helm of the House was virtually guaranteed months ago, when the Midterm Elections returned Rep...

Meet the New Boss
The deal is done: With a wave of his new, huge wooden gavel, John Boehner seized control of the House of Representatives. The gavel is an outsized block of wood that looks like the sawed-off top of a sledgehammer, far bigger than the medium-sized one Boehner handed to Pelosi four years ago, made by one of Boehner's constituents in western Ohio and given to the new Speaker as a gift. The symbol of Boehner's new power fits well with his straightforward, old-boy demeanor, which the outgoing Speak...

Dan Lipinski declines to vote for Pelosi as Democratic House leader
WASHINGTON--Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) was one of 19 House Democrats who declined on Wednesday to vote for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as Democratic leader. Lipinski, one of the most conservative Democrats in the House has long been at ideological odds with Pelosi during her time as House Speaker. Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, ended her tenure when she turned over the gavel to new Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Lipinski said in a statement that since the selection of Pelosi...

Wily Old Dems Take On Whippersnapper Republicans
Curious fact, unearthed by Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal. The average age of Republican House members in the new Congress convening today is 54.9, younger than the Republicans' average age in the previous Congress, 56.5. But the average age of House Democrats has risen, from 58 to 60.2. That can be explained partly by the high turnover in the 2010 election. Many younger Democrats, first elected in 2006 or 2008, fell by the wayside. The old bulls from 65 percent-plus Democratic dis...

Speaker Boehner's first day of work liveblog
4:00 "This rules packages gives us an opportunity to do exactly what President Lincoln wanted." -- Kevin Mccarthy (R-Calif.) on the hilarious new "cut as you go" rule, which is such a brilliant example of something that sounds nice but doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny that I honestly admire the people who came up with it. 3:00 The first real thing Boehner's House is doing: Stripping non-voting delegates of their votes in the Committee of the Whole. Sorry, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Y...

Boehner Elected Speaker, Ushers in New Republican House
Rep. John Boehner was elected speaker of the House Wednesday, sealing newfound Republican power-sharing as the 112th Congress convened and drawing the curtain on the history-making Nancy Pelosi era at the helm. Cheers broke out among GOP lawmakers on the House floor on Wednesday as Boehner, a Veteran lawmaker from Ohio, defeated Pelosi in the roll call for speaker. His rise to the helm of the House was virtually guaranteed months ago, when the Midterm Elections returned Republicans to control...

Boehner Elected Speaker
The New York Times reports: The new speaker of the House, John Boehner, promised a new era of transparency in lawmaking on Wednesday, but he also pledged to aggressively push forward the conservative agenda that swept his party into power. A roll-call vote of the chamber’s 435 members ended the way the results of November’s election determined that it would: with more votes for Mr. Boehner than for the Democratic Leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, making him speaker. In rem...

TN Rep Roe: I'm on Medicare. Repeal Congress' Health Care and ObamaCare
TN Rep Roe: I'm on Medicare. Repeal Congress' Health Care and ObamaCare In a remarkable exchange on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word, Tennessee Rep. Phil Roe says he supports the repeal of ObamaCare and the Congressional health care plan, which he doesn't use because he's on Medicare now. It was amazing and surreal all the way around. Mark Meckler, Tea Party Whore Extraordinaire, was on claiming that the "American People" supported repeal on a 2:1 basis. Adam Green of Bold Progressiv...

Breaking down the votes against Pelosi
Here is a further breakdown of the 19 House Democrats who voted for someone other than Nancy Pelosi to lead the Caucus. North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler got a higher number of votes (6 out of 7) among Democrats from districts that voted for John McCain in 2008. Seven out of the 12 members from Obama districts voted for someone other than Shuler, or in the case of Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop voted "present." Shuler also fared better among Democrats who opposed President Obama's landmark legislati...

Harry Reid: Americans Love Government!
**Written by Doug Powers Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi must drink their lunch from the same jar of delusion: On the first day of the new Congress, the Nevada Democrat lamented in his opening remarks what he referred to as obstruction from Senate Republicans over the past few years, accusing them of using stalling tactics to score political points on some Legislation. [...] “The American People love government, but they don’t like too much politics in government,” he said. Wrong, and wrong.

Area Congressman Boehner becomes speaker of the House
WASHINGTON – To the cheers and applause from a packed House chamber, area Congressman John A. Boehner was sworn in today as speaker, the first Ohio lawmaker to reach the peak of House power since 1931. Boehner, 61, a West Chester Twp. lawmaker who has harbored ambitions of becoming speaker for the past two decades, vowed in his first Speech to operate a more open chamber, a marked departure from the way both Democratic and Republican speakers have run the House. In particular, he promis...

Boehner Commits To Open Process As GOP Moves Towards Adopting Closed Rule On Health Repeal
Boehner Commits To ‘Open’ Process As GOP Moves Towards Adopting Closed Rule On Health Repeal In a widely televised Inaugural Speech this afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reiterated his commitment to “openness” and fair debate in the 112th Congress, even as his new majority prepares to bar Democrats from offering any amendments to the Health Care repeal Legislation and is forgoing the normal process of debating the measures in committee before they’re ...

House GOP's Plan: Vote Early and Often Against The Obama Agenda
A twenty day period of votes against the Obama Agenda, which of course are not effectual on their own (as Democrats still control the Senate). But they hope to both demonstrate that they're carrying through on promises to voters and force Obama and the Democrats in the Senate closer to a Tea Party view of the world. Almost as soon as they take control of the House at noon Wednesday, Republicans will embark on a 20-day plan aimed at undoing major aspects of President Obama's agenda as they seek ...

Speaker of the House John Boehner
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. “Madam Speaker, thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your service. I’d like to welcome our new colleagues and their families. My own family is here as well: my wife, Debbie, our daughters, Lindsay and Tricia; my brothers and sisters, brothers-and-sisters-in-law, and their Children. “I am honored and humbled to represent a great, hard-working community in Congress. The people of Ohio’s Eighth Congr...

A new era begins at the Capitol
The main event today is the inauguration of Dannel P. Malloy as Connecticut's first Democratic Governor in a generation, but the day also belonged to 24 new House members and five new senators who began their legislative careers on a day of celebration and sober talk, endings and beginnings. "We may be dysfunctional, but guess what? From this day forward we are family," House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero, R-Norwalk, said in a light greeting to his colleagues, who laughed with appreciatio...

Boehner Elected Speaker of the House
(NewsCore) - Republican John Boehner of Ohio was officially elected the 61st Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives by the 112th Congress Wednesday, vowing more transparency and accountability in the “people’s House.” Boehner was handed the Speaker’s gavel after receiving 241 of the 432 votes cast, while outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) received 173. Calling Boehner a “legislative leader of skill,” a "man of conviction" and a man of “great ...

Obamas New Regulations on Business Cost $28 Billion
The Obama Administration is regulating everything and anything they can get dream up. Rep. Darryl Issa will be investigating the cost of those regulations on American businesses, and has asked those businesses for input. CNS News reported: As part of a congressional investigation into burdensome regulations, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is asking the business community for help in determining how certain government regulations can hurt job growth. Issa cites the Obama administration’s own

New Senate Republican Says Defense Budget Could Be Cut
Pennsylvania's incoming senator, Pat Toomey, widely known as a fiscal hawk, says he is prepared to work with Democrats to "ratchet back the spending" and indicated he is even prepared to look at trimming a sacred cow, the Budget for the Defense Department. The economic crisis has refocused some Republicans, including newly-minted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., prompting them to step gingerly into this arena that is often fraught with political peril, always careful to reiterate, as To...

No Speaker of the House?
As the House votes member by member on the nomination of Republican John Boehner to Speaker of the House, exactly who holds the position at this very moment? While Nancy Pelosi will be the one to ceremoniously hand over the gavel after the culmination of the vote, she doesn't actually hold the position now. Pelosi's term as Speaker ended at noon on Monday, which means there actually is not a House Speaker until, as expected, Boehner is sworn in later today. Behind the vice president and speake...

N.Y. governor unveils emergency debt plan
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The newly inaugurated Governor of New York proposed a wave of belt-tightening measures Wednesday as part of what he called a fundamental realignment of the state. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who assumed office Jan. 1, laid out the emergency fiscal plan designed to help bridge a $9 billion Budget gap in fiscal 2012 during his inaugural State of the State Speech. Email Print Comment "We need to transform our budget. We have to start with an emergency financial plan to st...

Political Quote of the Day
From former Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.”A little context from Fox Nation: The numbers tell a different story. When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the National Debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s Speakership on December 22, 2010 the National Debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 - a roughly $5.2 Trillion increase in j...

It's official: Republicans rule the House
WASHINGTON — Newly elected speaker John Boehner hailed the Republican Party's return to control of the House Wednesday, vowing a more open legislative process but acknowledging that "a great deal of scar tissue has built up on both sides of the aisle." GOP lawmakers, who picked up 64 House seats in the November Elections, cheered loudly when Boehner defeated Democrat Nancy Pelosi in the roll call for speaker. The Veteran Ohio lawmaker's rise to the speakership was virtually guaranteed by...