By Emelie Rutherford
House Democrats named their members on key defense panels yesterday as Congress prepared to tackle the fiscal year 2012 Pentagon budget proposal next month.
The House Appropriations Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) will have a similar yet diminished Democratic lineup in the Republican-controlled House, and will only lose one member who served last session and returned to Congress this year. The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), which is set to vote on a subcommittee reorganization today, has a new lineup of 27 Democratic members.
The minority party’s House subcommittee assignments were announced yesterday after the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee approved the HASC members and the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) endorsed the HAC-D assignments. Final approvals of the party’s new subcommittee lineups were expected to be granted last night by the House Democratic caucus.
During the 112th Congress over the next two years, the HAC-D Democrats will be led by Ranking Member Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), who also is the top Democrat on the full House Appropriations Committee. The other new HAC-D Democrats all served on the subpanel last session, when their party controlled the House: Reps. Pete Visclosky (Ind.), Jim Moran (Va.), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Steve Rothman (N.J.), and Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.). Former HAC-D member Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) is no longer on the subcommittee, and past members Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) and Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) lost their reelection bids last year.
The HASC, under new Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), will have 27 Democrats. Five of them are new to the panel or served on it previously but not at the end of last session: Democratic Reps. Betty Sutton (Ohio), Colleen Hanabusa (Hawaii), C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), Tim Ryan (Ohio), and Kathy Castor (Fla.).
An aide said the HASC subcommittee ranking members will include Reps. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) for Seapower and Projection Forces and Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) for Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee. The new ranking members had not officially been announced at press time, though.
New HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) proposed on Monday a new rules package and oversight plan for the HASC, which committee members will vote on today.
McKeon said his changes will put the panel, which he started chairing this month, on a “war footing,” by aiming to better align the seven subcommittees with “current operations and future threats.”
The subcommittee previously called the Air and Land Forces subcommittee would be named the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee and take over oversight of all Navy and Marine Corps aviation programs. It also would assume control of most Marine Corps acquisition programs, with exceptions including the ill-fated Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which would remain with the seapower-focused subcommittee.
The Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee would be renamed the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee and assume oversight of some weapon-system efforts including deep-strike bombers and airlift programs, which previously fell under and air-and-land subpanel.
Other changes the HASC will vote on today include transparency rules calling for posting online: legislation considered by the committee at least 24 hours in advance, amendments within 24 hours after adoption, and results of roll call votes after no more than 48 hours.
The oversight plan specifically names weapon-system efforts the HASC would focus on, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ proposed cancellation of the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and the progress of the service’s troubled short take-off and vertical-landing variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.