New Minority Members Assigned to Senate Commerce Committee
The Senate Commerce Committee will have one fewer Republican member in the 113th Congress, committee aides confirmed Thursday. The committee will now have a 13-11 split between Democrats and Republicans as the panel prepares to address telecom reform in the 113th Congress. Telecom lobbyists said Thursday that the new member ratio was unlikely to have a significant effect on the committee’s oversight of telecom and tech issues.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Senate Republicans assigned incoming Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to Commerce. Both Scott and Cruz have been endorsed by the tea party movement. Also joining them on the committee are Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis. They replace Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who resigned last session to head the Heritage Foundation, and Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who retired. Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., will leave the Commerce Committee for the Finance Committee, their offices confirmed, and Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., will leave the Commerce Committee to join the Appropriations Committee, his spokesman said.
Commerce Committee Republicans had not yet selected their ranking member, though it’s widely believed that their most senior member, John Thune, R-S.D., will be named to the post (CD Dec 7 p1) or (WID Dec 7 p1). The GOP committee assignments now await ratification by the Senate Republican Conference and the Senate. Once confirmed, the Republican members of each committee will elect their ranking members for the 113th Congress.
It is “likely” that Democrats will have to assign a replacement for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on the Commerce Committee if he’s confirmed as secretary of state, a committee spokesman said Thursday. His confirmation would mean the committee would lose its third Democratic member from the 112th Congress. In December, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., announced that Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would replace Tom Udall, D-N.M., who left to join the Appropriations Committee. At our deadline Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had not named anyone to replace former committee member Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, who passed away last month.
Senate Republicans assigned Cruz to join the Senate Judiciary Committee along with Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. They will replace former Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who retired, and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who left the committee and became the most senior minority member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In December Senate Democrats named Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, to replace Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., who retired.