Senate Reorganizes

March 3rd, 2005

Posted by: admin

A few weeks ago I wrote about the reorganization of the House Appropriations Committee. This week, the Senate announced changes as well. In general, the Senate side mirrors the House changes. VA/HUD has been disbanded and its jurisdiction spread across the remaining subcommittees.

Of the main science agencies, NASA, NSF, and DoC science are found in Commerce and Science, EPA is now in Interior, and NIH remains in Labor/HHS subcommittee.

A few differences do exist. The Senate choose to keep the DC and Legislative Branch subcommittees and made no changes to Defense. More importantly, the Senate has placed the State Department in Foreign Ops, while the House keeps State with Commerce, Science, and Justice. State was appropriated $8.5 billion last year. This difference may cause some problems when the House and Senate reconcile spending bills, as the Commerce, Science, etc. and Foreign Ops subcommittees now overlap between the two chambers. Overall, however, the changes are similar enough so that the overall appropriations process won’t be threatened.

As for the particular affect on science funding, my comments from last time haven’t changed.

A full list of the new structure follows:

House Subcommittee Chair Senate Subcommittee Chair
Agriculture Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies Senator Bennett
Science, State, Justice and Commerce Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) Commerce, Justice, and Science Senator Shelby
Defense Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) Defense Senator Stevens
Energy and Water Rep. David Hobson (R-OH) Energy and Water Senator Domenici
Foreign Operations Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Senator McConnell
Interior and Environment Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) Interior and Related Agencies Senator Burns
Homeland Security Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) Homeland Security Senator Gregg
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH) Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and
Related Agencies
Senator Specter
Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Rep. James Walsh (R-NY) Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Senator Hutchison
Transportation, Treasury and Housing Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, and Housing
and Urban Development
Senator Bond
Legislative Branch Senator Brownback
District of Columbia Senator DeWine

Comments are closed.