Sen. Dianne Feinstein, poised to assume a Senate committee chairmanship after years in the minority, plans an aggressive push for federal voting standards and to reform rules for lobbying and congressional pork-barrel projects.

The California Democrat also plans to push long-standing priorities including global warming legislation and an agriculture guest worker program. In an interview Thursday she said California will reap myriad benefits from a new Democrat-controlled Congress featuring Californians in prominent roles.

"In terms of public policy the voice of Californians is going to be heard clear as a bell," said Feinstein, who come January will chair the Senate Rules Committee that oversees Senate operations and federal elections.

California's other senator, Barbara Boxer, will chair the Environment and Public Works Committee, and San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi was formally chosen Thursday as House speaker. All three are the first women in their respective roles.

California's status as a donor state that sends more tax money to the federal treasury than it gets back in federal program and project spending could be improved in the new Congress, Feinstein said.

"In terms of seeing California gets its fair share, that is helped particularly by a speaker, who controls her party ... She can certainly prevent any gross injustice in terms of appropriations," Feinstein said.

Feinstein, 73, has served in the Senate since she was elected along with Boxer in 1992's Year of the Woman. She has a liberal-to-moderate legislative record that's won her support even from Republicans, and she was overwhelmingly elected to a third full term last week, beating Republican Dick Mountjoy 59 percent to 35 percent.

Feinstein ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1990 and she was discussed as a possible candidate in the 2003 gubernatorial recall. Her name already has surfaced for the 2010 governor's race. But Feinstein said she's happy in the Senate.

"We now are in the majority. I have a chance to make change for the American people. I do want to be part of that," she said. "You put in so many years just percolating up to the position where you can affect policy, and what I feel very deeply is I want to make every day work, I want to work every day to the fullest and the chips will fall where they may."

In addition to chairing Rules, Feinstein will continue to serve on the Appropriations, Judiciary and Intelligence committees. Among her legislative priorities:

_Voting reform legislation to require that electronic voting machines produce a paper receipt that can be verified by the voter.

_A bill to eliminate lobbyist-paid gifts and travel and require Hill staffers who've become lobbyists to wait longer to lobby their former offices.

_Legislation requiring disclosure of "earmarks" — the pork project funding members of Congress can insert into bills with little scrutiny. Feinstein said the sponsors of earmarks should be made public, but she believes earmarks themselves have a purpose.

"It is my belief that the earmark is really the only way a member of Congress has to add something that is not in the president's budget," she said, adding that it's an important way to address California's infrastructure needs.

_An agriculture jobs bill. Feinstein has proposed a pilot program to allow people who have worked in agriculture for three to five years to get green cards and ultimately citizenship. It would allow in 1.5 million workers over five years.

_Global warming legislation. Like Boxer, Feinstein believes California's landmark global warming bill that capped emissions is a good starting point, but Feinstein also wants to legislate an emissions credit trading program.

_Passage of a bill to increase anti-gang intervention and prosecution, which Feinstein has worked on in the Judiciary Committee.