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Quinn Gillespie & Associates (QGA), a top Washington, D.C. lobbying and communications firm, celebrated its 10-year anniversary Tuesday night with the city’s biggest event of the holiday season. Over 700 guests — congressmen, senators, White House staff, corporate executives, clients, members of the media — talked politics and more on the rooftop of the new W Hotel.

Members of Congress seemed relaxed and cheerful, including the powerful House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.).

On the winter-decorated, blue-lighted balcony, QGA Chairman Jack Quinn shook hands and back-slapped like the mayor of a small town. Wife Susanna Quinn introduced guests to one another, while they sipped drinks and looked out over the White House and Lincoln Memorial, glowing in the rainy night.

The party-crashing scandal at last month’s state dinner seemingly has not affected the culture of Washington partyers, as more than 350 people who were not invited RSVP’d to the event.

The firm had a “crashers” list for greeters to check. Most of the people on the list are low-level Capitol Hill staffers. Many guests were hoping that Michaela and Tareq Salahi would make an appearance with Bravo cameras in tow, but the now-infamous couple were no-shows.

On hand were former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Key Hill staffers included Stacy Kerr, special assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with husband C.R. Wooters, director of member services for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.); and Stacey Bernards, senior adviser to Hoyer.

Pols around town mixed in a holiday-spirit bipartisan way, including Sarah Feinberg, senior adviser to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel; lobbyist Chet Lott (with his father, Sen. Lott); Visa’s Kristin Solheim; and Elmendorf Strategies lobbyist Shanti Stanton.

Business executives were out in force too: Google Voice‘s Craig Walker and Google executive Wesley Chan Jamie and Dave Dorros Paul Dougherty; Winston Lord; the Patton Group’s Jayne Sandman and Barbara Martin. Also enjoying the festivities were stylist Christopher Johnson Johnny Wright, stylist to First Lady Michelle Obama; Sharon Bradley; George Salon’s Carl Ray and Rick Raines.

The media were heavily represented: Fox News’ Brit Hume (as the date of his daughter Virginia Hume, who works at QGA) and Bret Baier, with wife Amy; the Washington Post’s Amy Argetsinger; Politico’s Jim VandeHei and Kiki Ryan; the Washington Times’ John McCaslin; Washington Life’s John Arundel and Tony Powell; CNN’s Ed Henry; CBS’s Christine Delargy; the Washington Examiner’s Tara Palmeri; FishbowDC’s Matt Dornic; MIX 107.3’s Tommy McFly; and UrbanDaddy’s Jeff Dufour.

QGA was founded by Democrat Jack Quinn, a former Clinton White House counsel, and Republican Ed Gillespie, who left the firm to be a senior adviser to President Bush. QGA has stayed on the top-10 lobbying list over the years, withstanding the political turnover from a Republican White House and Congress to the Democratic takeover on Capitol Hill and the Obama administration.

Click play below for a slideshow of photos from the event:

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COPENHAGEN— Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson insisted Wednesday that her agency did not time the release of its global-warming endangerment finding to jump-start climate talks here.

“The endangerment finding and the work here are separate,” she told a packed room at the Bella Center. “Certainly, I was glad we were able to complete the finding and make that statement just before, but that wasn’t the impetus for our work.”

International negotiators have jumped on the ruling as a way for the Obama administration to increase its commitment to slashing greenhouse gases, regardless whether Congress goes along.

The ruling forces the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions reductions from industrial polluters like power plants, factories and auto makers.

The EPA announcement comes two-and-a-half years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Bush administration to reconsider whether greenhouse gas emissions should be deemed pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Already, the White House has used the Clean Air Act to mandate higher mileage and emissions standards for the auto industry.

“The Clean Air Act allows us to do what it does best, make reasonable cost-effective regulations,” said Jackson.

Jackson also reiterated that the administration would prefer to use executive-branch regulation of greenhouse gases only as a “compliment” to a bill passed by Congress.

“We need legislation,” she said.

President Barack Obama will meet with chief executives of major banks on Monday and is expected to urge them face-to-face to lend more money to help promote economic recovery, banking sources tell POLITICO.

A source familiar with the planning said invitations went out to CEOs last weekend for what will be a morning session at the White House.

The CEOs expect to hear from the president about why banks ought to be lending more, why they shouldn’t oppose his financial reform initiatives, and why they ought to hold the line on bonuses and compensation, the sources said.

The lending issue irks some in the industry. “The White House’s political people like [senior adviser David] Axelrod tell us to lend more,” said one banking official. “But the regulators are saying the exact opposite. They’re saying, ramp up your capital ratios, and if you see default risk on the horizon, cut back on lending.”

The White House’s Jen Psaki said: “The president is looking forward to meeting with members of the financial services industry on Monday to discuss our shared interest in economic recovery, the need to increase small business lending and the Administration’s plans for financial reform.”

ABC News will announce George Stephanopoulos as an anchor of “Good Morning America,” to start as soon as Monday, industry sources tell POLITICO. The announcement is planned for Thursday.

Stephanopoulos, 48, joins Robin Roberts at the anchor desk of the lucrative morning show. He will succeed Diane Sawyer, who has her last day on the show Friday and begins Dec. 21 as anchor of “World News.”

Stephanopoulos may keep his Sunday show, “This Week,” for a transition period. The network brass don’t want to disrupt that show, which is doing well. Eventually, a new host would be named.

The Manhattan-bound Stephanopoulos also was ABC’s chief Washington correspondent. From Capitol Hill to presidential politics to the White House to network news, Stephanopoulos has repeatedly triumphed in hostile environments through charm and dogged preparation, and has executed a remarkable series of seamless reinventions.

JuJu Chang will succeed Chris Cuomo as the “GMA” news anchor.

From Stephanopoulos’ network bio: 

“George Stephanopoulos is ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent and host ABC’s … Sunday morning political affairs program, ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos.’ … Stephanopoulos was named Chief Washington Correspondent in December 2005 and began anchoring ‘This Week′ in September 2002. Previously, he was an ABC News correspondent, reporting on a wide variety of political, domestic and international stories for ‘This Week,’ ‘World News Tonight,’ ‘Good Morning America’ and other ABC News programs and special event broadcasts. Stephanopoulos joined ABC News in 1997 as a news analyst for ‘This Week.’ 

“Prior to joining ABC News, Stephanopoulos served in the Clinton administration as the senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy. He is the author of ‘All Too Human,’ a No. 1 New York Times best-seller on President Clinton’s first term and the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns. Stephanopoulos received his Master’s degree in theology from Balliol College, Oxford University, England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude in political science. Stephanopoulos and his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, live in Washington, D.C., with their two daughters.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday night that Republicans look strong heading into 2010.

“I think we’ll pick up a lot of seats,” Cheney said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “Prospects for the Republicans in 2010 are very good.”

Looking ahead to 2012, Cheney said that President Barack Obama appears much more vulnerable than the former vice president thought he would be.

“Right after Obama was elected, there was the view that he was invincible,” Cheney said. “He could raise more money than anybody else. He had this machine that smashed the Clinton campaign and then won the national election, and that he′d be around for eight years and now I think that has changed fairly dramatically.”

Cheney said Obama will be hurt electorally for, in the former vice president’s view, shifting to “more radical” policy positions than he originally pitched.

“[Obama] got elected as a liberal Democrat, but conventional in the sense of sort of falling within the parameters of the national Democratic Party,” Cheney said. “He’s demonstrated pretty conclusively now during his first year in office that he’s more radical than that, that he’s farther outside the parameters if you will of what we’ve traditionally had in Democratic presidents in years past.”

But while Cheney thinks a Republican could take down Obama in 2012, he was reluctant to name the GOP candidate he believes could step up.

“At this point I’d be reluctant to pinpoint anybody,” he said. “It might hurt them more than it would help them coming from me.”