Fellow moderate Democrat Rep. Steny Hoyer, who whipped the vote, said he had not asked her to come.

“She smiled at me and said I love you, and it doesn’t get better than that,” Hoyer said. “She’s got a ways to go obviously, but she’s on top of things. She knows everybody, knows exactly what’s going on, it was very heartening that she was able to get on an airplane and come here and vote.”

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Biden heard Giffords would be in town. “I got a tip. That’s why I came up, to give her a hug,” he said. “I told her she’s now a member of the cracked head club, like me, with two craniotomies. It was just so good to see.” The vice president was treated for two life-threatening aneurysms in 1988.

Biden noted that Giffords has friends on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) embraced her. “I mean look, the thing that sometimes gets lost in this place—and maybe I spent too much time here this week, there is a basic humanity here. It matters.”

Speaker John Boehner knew Giffords was coming only about an hour before she arrived. He greeted her at the elevator off the House floor.

The appearance appeared to be a surprise to most lawmakers, including Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.).

“I said “Hello, I love you’ and she said ‘I love you’ back,” Edwards said. “It was great to see her vote. It was really wonderful.”

Giffords’ fellow Arizonan, Rep. Raul Grijalva, embraced her.

Giffords stood and walked on her own, with some help walking down stairs. Her right right hand was wrapped in a bandage. Overall, she appeared in good spirits and alert.

A row of police protected the door as Giffords exited the floor, as a throng of reporters rushed to catch a glimpse of her.

Giffords’ office tweeted a few minutes before her appearance in the Capitol: “Gabrielle has returned to Washington to support a bipartisan bill to prevent economic crisis. Turn on C-SPAN now.”

The congresswoman from Arizona was shot at close range, making a recovery that astounded her doctors. Six people died in the shooting rampage. In all, 17 people were shot.

—Marin Cogan, Matt DoBias, Elizabeth Titus, and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.