While not official until next month’s organizational meeting of the newly-named House Science, Space and Technology Committee (someone tell Mooney), the Chair and Ranking Member have announced subcommittee Chairs and Ranking Members, and Ranking Member Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) has announced the Democratic members of the Committee. I won’t know the numbers for the full committee without seeing the Republican roster, but it may shrink compared to previous years.
There are 93 new members of the House in this Congress, so there are some shifts in membership of the Committee, either from freshman members or members new to the Committee, but not to Congress. Most of the new faces will be Republican.
And that includes four of the five subcommittee chairmen. More senior Republican members of the Committee have opted for leadership positions in other committees, and House rules (at least for Republicans) limit the number of leadership positions held, as well as setting term limits for leadership positions). While the freshmen subcommittee leaders may well prove to be particularly interested science and technology issues, they are mostly unknown quantities. Those that have name recognition earned it more for their ideological statements than any particular command of the issues. The same can be said for the one subcommittee leader who is not a freshman, second-term Representative Paul Broun of Georgia.
By contrast, the announced Democratic subcommittee leaders are nearly all experienced members and chaired subcommittees in previous sessions of Congress. The exception is Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland, who is in her second full term in Congress. She is not new to the Committee, but new to committee leadership.
The subcommittees will remain as they did in the 110th and 111th Congresses. Members may sit on more than one subcommittee, but may only serve in leadership on one of them. The Committee Chair and Ranking Member are ex officio members of each subcommittee.
Pasco Phronesis 