Obama Team Works With Hill Democrats

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2008

Eager to avoid the missteps that plagued the first months of the Clinton administration, aides to Barack Obama have begun working in concert with top Democrats in Congress to craft a preliminary legislative agenda that would guide the senator from Illinois should he capture the White House in November.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has assigned her committee chairmen to begin with low-hanging fruit to build confidence and provide a new, young president quick legislative victories, then pivot to more challenging issues, from ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq to broadening health-care coverage. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) said his policy staffs and Obama's have been working together for more than a month.

"This is my last chance," Rangel, 78, said of his opportunity to make a lasting legislative imprint. "This is the big one."

Pelosi's priorities begin, in order, with ending the war in Iraq, expanding access to health care, rebuilding infrastructure and weaning the nation off oil. But with economic problems looming ever larger, she and other Democrats say providing relief could be their first target: "I'll just use a four-letter word," Pelosi said. "Jobs."

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill hope to dramatically expand their ranks in the fall election and are even allowing themselves to contemplate securing a potentially filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Their enthusiasm is tempered by some Democrats' caution against overreaching for fear that an agenda geared too much to the party's most liberal elements could make the 2010 elections a repeat of 1994, when Democrats were exiled from power on Capitol Hill for 12 years.

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