Nancy Pelosi calls $3.5T reconciliation bill the ‘culmination of my service in Congress’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is thinking about legacy this week as her time with the gavel winds down and Congress considers a $3.5 trillion bill that contains much of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

“I just told the members of my leadership the reconciliation bill will be the culmination of my service in Congress,” Pelosi told reporters during her weekly press conference.

The speaker has been working to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill this week, as progressive members of her caucus threaten to torpedo the legislation without passage of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill in tandem.

She has been part of the high-wire act of negotiating the two plans, while Congress also deals with the possibility of a government shutdown and the debt ceiling. The reconciliation package would include historic investments in infrastructure, caregiving and fighting climate change.

Pelosi has said 2020 would be her last term as speaker. She has spent two decades as the House Democratic leader, and she has said she considered retiring in 2016 if Hillary Clinton became president.

She changed her mind, though, when President Donald Trump unexpectedly won the White House. When Democrats regained the House in 2018, she took back the speaker’s gavel.

As the party’s majority narrowed in 2020, she won a narrow vote to stay on as speaker. Pelosi was the first woman chosen as speaker in 2007, two decades after she was elected to Congress in 1987.

Susan Page and Ledyard King contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nancy Pelosi's legacy: Reconciliation bill is ‘culmination' of service