Here are a few snippets from Jennifer Steinhauer’s puff piece on Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) in the New York Times.

Seven months into Senator Barbara A. Mikulski’s new assignment as chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, there is already a saying among members: “We loved Byrd, we respected Inouye, we fear Barbara.”

During a March floor debate, Ms. Mikulski ordered Senator John McCain of Arizona to go back to his office and read a bill so he could properly vote on it — and Mr. McCain, chastened but cheerful, agreed.

“I will now try to carry out my mission as assigned by the distinguished chairwoman,” he said.

“She is tough, she is determined, she is prepared,” [chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Hal] Rogers said. “She is also accommodating. But once she gets to a place, she is a bulldozer you can’t move.”

Unlike her most recent predecessors, Mr. Inouye and Mr. Byrd, Ms. Mikulski is more than happy to raise her legislative voice. She relentlessly lobbies Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, to put her bills on the floor, a luxury of attention that many appropriations bills have not had in years. “I would guess if Senator Mikulski goes to see the majority leader about her bills,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, laughing, “my guess is he drops what he is doing to listen.”

Her values as a spender stem, said several members, from her social activism, Roman Catholic faith and shameless Maryland boosting. She will talk for hours about the need to protect the National Institutes of Health, both because it is in her home state and because of her interest in health care.

She has no patience for attempts to gut programs for the poor, and is eager to pass her bills in part to distinguish between her priorities and those of House Republicans. “Our bills will show the difference,” she said.

The biggest difference she brings from previous Appropriations chairmen Sens. Robert Byrd and Dan Inouye is energy. She’s no spring chicken, but Byrd and Inouye were so advanced in age that they had to leave most of the work to staff. She also has a more combative style and she’s much more liberal. I’m glad people fear her. It might be the only way to avoid a government shutdown.