The last time Congress increased the federal minimum wage, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives. You may not be surprised if you think the minimum wage was increased recently, but this was back in 2007, when Democrats retook the House in the midst of President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.
The original bill to raise the minimum wage, from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, was part of HR 2, which you may notice is the second bill the House took up that Congress. It would eventually run through both houses of congress, being added to other bills, have some tax cuts added to it (to get Republican votes to pass the Senate), and would eventually be passed as part of a supplemental Iraq War funding bill on May 5, 2007. It wouldn’t go into full effect for another two years.
Side note: Taking inflation into account, $5.15 in 2007 is equivalent to $8.26 today—$7.25 is equivalent to $11.63. The federal minimum wage (still $7.25, remember) desperately needs to be increased.
This all to mention that Pelosi announced today that she will not be running for reelection next year. She had previously given up her leadership post, but kept her House seat. Now, she is giving that up as well.
It is altogether likely that Nancy Pelosi is one of the most important speaker of the house in American history (being the first woman will jump you a few rungs up that ladder), and it is altogether likely that she’s the most successful speaker of the house in a century.
While she was speaker, the House was a veritable factory of legislation. You may not have noticed, largely because the Senate, even in the best of times, is the opposite. She managed to get the House to pass bill after bill that would never pass the Senate, and, most notably and importantly, kept her caucus together through it all. You probably don’t remember cap and trade, but it passed the House and died in the Senate (back in 2009). You would expect that forcing hard votes on bills that would never become law to split the Democrats, but during her tenure it rarely did. Dems in Disarray may have been a meme, but was really never the reality of the House Democrats when she was speaker (or even rarely when she was House minority leader), even if the coalition was tenuous otherwise at best.
She also served as speaker under three consequential presidencies—a Bush presidency that gave us forever wars and a systemic financial collapse, an Obama presidency that rescued the economy and delivered health care and financial system reforms, and a Trump presidency that, to put it modestly, was the least orthodox presidency in American history. Through it all, the House Democrats put up a united front, even while Senate Democrats fractured and split and argued and backed away from fights and tough votes.
But, all things must come to an end, and it is far past time for Pelosi’s time in Congress to sunset. While I have to despise the ageism in contemporary Democratic politics, her keeping her seat and not being in leadership is doing nobody any favors. The so-called gerontocracy has become less a talking point and more a reality. A generation of potential leaders is waiting, and waiting, and waiting for their turn. Nancy Pelosi is 85 years old and has been in Congress since she was 47.
She’s made her history; it’s time for others to make theirs. But many thanks to her for decades of service towards doing the right things for Americans.
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