House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that she's not changing her career plans despite recent announcements that several of her high-profile Democratic colleagues will retire at the end of this term.
"No, they go at their pace, I go at mine," Pelosi said when asked if the recent retirements have made her think of ending her own tenure in Congress. "We'll miss them, they're fabulous, but again, it stirs the pot and lots of people are excited about the prospect of what comes next for them."
Three of the longest serving Democrats in the House have announced in the past months that they will be hanging up their legislative boots at the end of this term: Reps John Dingell, D-Mich., George Miller, D-Calif., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Between the three of them, they will have served a total of 70 terms in the House after they leave at the end of this year.
Waxman and Miller are considered two of the major players in Pelosi's inner circle, so many have speculated that their retirements may mean that Pelosi will follow suit.
But when a reporter asked Pelosi about those who are speculating that her era in power is coming to an end, she simply answered: "When it is, you'll know."
"I'm too busy, as long as there is one in five children in America who lives in poverty, what I do is get up every morning revved to the task," Pelosi said. "I have enough to invigorate me, and everybody's time table around here isn't everybody else's time table around here."