Okay, so no one wants to look at committee assignments. I get it. It’s boring. But you kind of have to understand the power arrangements on the committees to know what is likely to happen in the Senate. Anyway, Joe Lieberman made his farewell speech in the Senate today. No one cared. One former head of the DLC is gone, but another former head of the DLC will take over his chair of the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. That would be Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. I’m sure he will keep us all safe. I hope he likes Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin because they’ll be joining his committee. So, Canadians, beware! No unauthorized entry!
Mazie Hirono got a slot on the Judiciary Committee, which probably makes for a few firsts. First Hawaiian. First Japanese native. First Japanese-American. First Asian. First Buddhist. First non-theist.
Ron Wyden is taking over the chair of the Energy Committee from Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Sen. Wyden is a very good senator and will do a bang-up job. Mazie Hirono and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico will join him on the panel.
We have three new members of the powerful Appropriations Committee: Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Congratulations to them and their constituents.
The Armed Services Committee got three fairly conservative new members in Tim Kaine of Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Independent Angus King of Maine.
People are giddy that Elizabeth Warren landed a slot on the Banking Committee, but they should ponder for a moment the overall effect of Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp joining up with her. West Virginia and North Dakota are very red states, and their votes outweigh Warren’s. I doubt the banks are displeased with the overall change in the ideological makeup of the committee.
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut landed a spot on the Commerce Committee, which remains otherwise unchanged.
Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Michael Bennet of Colorado landed plum assignments on the Finance Committee. For Sen. Bennet, this was a reward for agreeing to take over the DSCC from Patty Murray. Good luck to him. Progressives should be thrilled about having Sen. Brown on Finance. He’s basically replacing Kent Conrad.
Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Tim Kaine of Virginia are going on the Foreign Relations Committee. Rumor has it that Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey will chair the committee if John Kerry joins the cabinet. That could complicate efforts to normalize relations with Cuba and it won’t help ease tensions with Iran. Of course, Barbara Boxer has right of first refusal, but most people think she will prefer to keep her chairmanship of the Environment & Public Works Committee.
You might not think the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee could get any more liberal. You would be wrong. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Chris Murphy are joining its ranks, while Michael Bennet is leaving.
Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Angus King of Maine will sit on Diane Feinstein’s Intelligence Committee.
Tammy Baldwin, Tim Kaine, and Angus King will sit on a Budget Committee newly-run by outgoing DSCC chairwoman, Patty Murray of Washington. She is very powerful now. Paul Ryan better adjust his jock.
Angus King is also the only new member of Chuck Schumer’s powerful Rules Committee. He replaces Ben Nelson.
Here’s something cool. Rep. Bernie Sanders is getting his first gavel. He will chair the Veteran’s Affairs Committee. It seems a fitting post for a Socialist, no? Richard Blumenthal and Mazie Hirono will join him.
Maria Cantwell of Washington is also getting her first gavel. She will chair the Indian Affairs Committee. Heidi Heitkamp is the only new member.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is also the only new member of Mary Landrieu’s Small Business Committee.
Sen. Heitkamp and Sen. Donnelly will also serve on Debbie Stabenow’s Agriculture Committee.
Obviously, the biggest news is the new chairmen: Bill Nelson (Aging), Murray (Budget), Wyden (Energy), Carper (Homeland Security), Sanders (Veteran’s Affairs), and Cantwell (Indian Affairs).
It’s also significant that women will chair seven of the twenty-one Senate Committees.
For progressives, the biggest news is that Sanders will chair Vet’s, Murray will chair Budget, Sherrod Brown will serve on Finance, Elizabeth Warren will serve on Banking, Martin Heinrich will serve on Intelligence, and Mazie Hirono will serve on the Judiciary. Also, that Tammy Baldwin will serve at all.
Thanks for this post! Looks good to me. It may well be that E. Warren will be outvoted by other members of the Banking committee, but her voice will be strong and influential, and she will be heard.
Sherrod Brown and Merkley are also on the Banking Cmte.
Hey, I followed the link. Then I got curious about Inouyi and found this;
On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily-defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy called Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint along the strip of German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, which represented the last and most dogged line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions just 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach; ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and fire from his Thompson submachine gun. After being informed of the severity of his wound by his platoon sergeant, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he also successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.
As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, eventually drawing within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade into the fighting position, a German inside fired a rifle grenade that struck him on the right elbow, severing most of his arm and leaving his own primed grenade reflexively “clenched in a fist that suddenly didn’t belong to me anymore”. Inouye’s horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. As the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the German aimed his rifle to finish him off, Inouye tossed the grenade off-hand into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. When he awoke to see the concerned men of his platoon hovering over him, his only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them to return to their positions, since, as he pointed out, “nobody called off the war!”
That’s just crazy.
.
No, that’s heroism.
crazy wild heroism I’m sure nalbar meant
An amazing story. Those kids, those crazy kids. He was probably all of 19.
Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Michael Bennet of Colorado landed plum assignments on the Finance Committee. For Sen. Bennet, this was a reward for agreeing to take over the DSCC from Patty Murray. Good luck to him.
Great!! We have one idiotic corporatist tool heading the DCCC, and we now get another corporatist tool heading the DSCC. I’ll gladly give Bennet props if he can convince Ashley Judd to retire The Turtle. You did see that PPP polled that race and found she’s only 4 behind, right? So, she’s not too liberal!! At any rate, Kentucky doesn’t mind the idea of her as their Senator!!
No matter what Sanders says, he’s not a socialist. If he was a legislator in Canada, he’d be about in the middle of the ideological make-up of the Liberal Party, and wouldn’t even fit in with NDP (which are actual socialists). Minor quibble, I guess.
And DDay pointed out that North Dakota has the only state-owned bank. Might that help when it comes to Heitkamp’s ideology?
At some point this ignoramus would appreciate a post as to why all these committee assignments matter all that much in a Senate where Dems don’t have a supermajority and a House where Dems are in a minority. If it the senate cannot pass any actual legislation which hasn’t been gutted by republicans, is this not all mostly a whole lot of hot air?
PS – No warren on Indian affairs? 😉
A bunch of things:
Behind the scenes, away from the cameras, the senators legislate in a much more constructive way than they ever want to let on. The Republicans suggested many amendments to the mark-ups for ObamaCare that were overwhelmingly accepted. Tom Coburn, for example, is a doctor who actually made a valid contribution to writing ObamaCare. This kind of stuff also goes on in the House/Senate commissions that reconcile bills for final passage.
Also, these are six-year terms. Bernie Sanders became a senator six years ago. Now he oversees veteran’s affairs.
Obviously, who chairs a committee matters a lot both for the country and for their home state. Sanders has already upgraded the services for Vets in Vermont dramatically, and that was before he became chairman.
Who serves on a committee matters a ton if there is any possibility that they will side with the Republicans on certain issues and throw control of the committee to them. Having Mary Landrieu and Joe Manchin on the Energy Committee hands control to the Republicans on some issues. Having Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln on Finance hurt us when we wanted a public option.
It’s true that we shouldn’t expect much legislation as long as the GOP controls the House, but there were still be some, even if it is mostly omnibus appropriations bills.
Finally, where you start is a good indicator of where you’ll finish. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have much power on the Banking Committee, yet. But she may become its chairman one day. Before long, she will chair one of its subcommittees, where bills are typically hatched.
I appreciate all the behind the scenes stuff when the cameras aren’t rolling, and also that individual senators can sometimes leverage their vote for home state goodies if the vote is tight. It seams potential “swing” senators have nearly all the leverage, so the senate will generally have a “centrist” bias.
In a functioning democracy, all well and good, but you don’t need a Senate and a formal committee structure to get people of different ideologies/parties working together on issues of common concern or where interests overlap. It also provides corporate interests an easy and “legitimate” point of entry into the legislative process – with many actually writing the bills to save semi-literate senators the trouble.
But its hard to get excited about the process when it is a given that no progressive legislation can pass, and only legislation “well oiled” by corporate interests has any prospect of gaining the required bipartisan support. In fact you can probably replace the word “Bi-partisan” with the word “corporate” and get a more accurate sense of what is actually going on.
I’m not suggesting the committee structure is irrelevant, but I find it difficult to see why Senators would want to render themselves impotent by requiring super majorities for any work to actually get done – unless they actually want to keep the corporate gravy train rolling.
Baldwin on Homeland Security and Lieberman gone from the function that was his pet project is good. I hope they don’t think they have to be advocates for DHS like Joe was.
Homeland Security is a dumping ground for conservative Dems that the leadership doesn’t want on Judiciary or HELP or anywhere where they might give power to the GOP on core issues. Baldwin’s talents are wasted there.
Homeland Security is where many civil liberties issues will be decided. Having progressive eyes and ears there is important for early warning of nonsense. I don’t think she will be wasted there at all.
The committees that are considered unimportant for progressives have been where the mischief has come from. Progressives loaded up the topical committees like HELP and Energy and didn’t have seniority on Budget, Rules, and Finance. Now Patty Murrary is chair of the Budget Committee. That is a huge difference from Kent “Debt Commission” Conrad. Conrad more than anyone else set up the situation for the debt limit crisis to appear by echoing the Pete Peterson party line and by holding the reconciliation of ACA hostage for his precious debt commission (delivered in the form of Bowles-Simpson).
I hope we can see big things from Heidi Heitkamp on Indian Affairs committee. According to election night results she won with a margin of 3,000 votes. And the 4 counties with the highest percentage Indian population gave her a margin of 4,400 votes.
Meteor Blades at Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/08/1158417/-American-Indian-voters-and-Indian-organizers-gave-
N-D-Senate-edge-to-Democrat-Heidi-Heitkamp
In SD, ND, MT, ID, CO, AZ, and NM, Indian voters are very important. In SD, if you do not get the Indian voters out in huge numbers, you cannot win. I wonder how Steph H-S did 2 years ago, and how Varilek did this time around.
Is Hirono a non-theist? There are many Buddhist denominations that believe in gods though not in quite the same way as Indo-European or Semitic religions.
I was going to make this point too. I guess you could say she is at least a non-monotheist.
I read the list, only to realize that I didn’t have enough information to understand the repercussions. Thank you for explaining all of this.