Fuel Bill Shows House Speaker’s Muscle

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The question has hung over Nancy Pelosi since she became speaker of the House: could she handle the powerful Democratic committee chairmen who stuck it out 12 years in the minority for the chance to wield authority once their party won control?

With the deal on a major energy bill on Friday evening, the answer was clear. Ms. Pelosi had effectively corralled the oldest and arguably the baddest of the “old bulls,” Representative John D. Dingell Jr. of Michigan, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Ms. Pelosi’s maneuvering around Mr. Dingell on the energy bill is the clearest example of how, in her dealings with the chairmen, she has kept power in the House firmly in the speaker’s office. She is clearly in charge as Congress heads into these last critical weeks of the year, seeking to clinch legislative victories.

Mr. Dingell, 81, is the senior member of the House, elected in 1955 when Ms. Pelosi, 67, was in high school. An advocate of his home-state automobile industry, he has been a force in preventing any big increase in fuel-efficiency standards for cars since 1984. But Friday’s deal includes a provision to increase fuel efficiency to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020; Mr. Dingell had favored a more modest increase.

“Let them try,” he said, when asked this year if younger House leaders were trying to push him aside on the issue. “They won’t be able to do it.”

But Ms. Pelosi did. And even on Saturday, as Mr. Dingell sought to put the best spin on things, he bristled at times, insisting that some provisions that Ms. Pelosi said would be included in the bill had yet to be worked out. Still, he conceded, “If she wants it in the final package, it will probably be there.”

(Continued here.)