Pelosi and Hoyer: It's been a busy 100 days for House Democrats

In November, the American people elected Democrats to take back the reins of power in the House of Representatives and put it back to work on their behalf. In our first 100 days in the majority, we have begun to deliver on that promise. With a dynamic, diverse and energized freshman class of 63 new members, Democrats are moving ahead with our agenda for the people: Lower health care costs and the price of prescription drugs, increase paychecks by rebuilding the infrastructure of America in a green, modern and job-creating way, and clean up corruption in Washington so that the government works for the public interest, not the special interests.

Nancy Pelosi

Steny Hoyer

One of the first acts of our new majority was to enable the House to defend the Affordable Care Act in court against efforts by Republican-led states and the Trump administration to dismantle it. This was soon followed by the introduction of a comprehensive bill to stabilize our health care system and lower health care costs for consumers. Already, committees are holding hearings and marking up legislation to keep Democrats' promises to take action to make health care and prescription drugs cheaper.

To address wage stagnation, we passed H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, in March. This legislation, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, makes it harder to discriminate against women in pay and benefits. With women now the sole breadwinner or co-breadwinner in two-thirds of families with children, closing the gender wage gap is an issue of both fairness and economic opportunity across our country.

Meanwhile, Chairman Bobby Scott and Education and Labor Committee Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act in January, and it has already been marked up and received committee approval. This bill, which aims to increase the minimum wage eventually to $15 an hour, will be considered on the House floor in the coming months.

In the first days of the 116th Congress, House Democrats moved swiftly to implement new rules to make the legislative process more open and transparent and hold elected officials to higher ethics standards. In the weeks that followed, led by Rep. John Sarbanes and many of our freshmen, Democrats passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act.