Republicans on Wednesday officially selected Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to serve as the new chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Cole, a member of the panel’s defense subcommittee, succeeds Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who announced her plans in March to step down as chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
“I am proud to announce that I was ratified by the House Republican Conference this morning as the new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. I would like to thank the Conference for their support and assure them that I am committed to conversing with them all to make sure that we are working to benefit their constituents, as well as properly utilizing our budget to defend our country and meet legitimate domestic needs,” Cole said in a statement on Wednesday. “I am excited to hit the ground running and get to work for this great nation.”
Cole, who ran unopposed for the Appropriations chairmanship, has been a strong proponent of increased defense spending during his time on the defense subcommittee.
“As a senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I am a champion for strong national defense, the fiscal discipline of the Department of Defense, and a foreign policy platform that prioritizes our country’s interests to maximize the safety of our freedoms. I will continue to support a robust military equipped to face a multi-domain operational future,” Cole writes on his website.
The Oklahoma Republican had been serving as HAC’s vice chair and also stepped down from his role leading the House Rules Committee, which oversees the floor agenda, as he takes over as the lower chamber’s top appropriator.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has nominated Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) to succeed Cole as chair of the Rules Committee.
Cole, 74, has represented Oklahoma’s 4th District since 2003, which is home to Ft. Still and Tinker Air Force Base.
“During my tenure in Congress, I am proud to state that we have brought 2,500 new Soldiers to Fort Sill, led to more than a billion dollars in new funding, and trained over a dozen different populations from our allied partners,” Cole writes on his website. “Tinker is also Oklahoma’s largest single-site employer, with 17,000 civilian and 9,000 military employees and an economic impact of $4.55 billion to the state. Each year, Tinker awards roughly $1 billion in contracts to small Oklahoma-based businesses and almost three times that to companies in Oklahoma.”