Three committee chairmanships, three disappointments.
Veterans’ Affairs Committee — The committee’s current chair, Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), despite his widespread popularity among actual veterans, was removed from his post yesterday. As expected, he was replaced because he wasn’t loyal enough in toeing the GOP line.
House Republican leaders decided Wednesday to oust Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Christopher Smith, a lawmaker with strong allies in the veterans’ community who has tested his party’s demands for loyalty with his stances on funding.
The GOP leaders, in a secret ballot, chose Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., a 10-year veteran of the committee, to replace Smith, R-N.J., who has led the panel for the past four years. Smith is expected to lose his committee seat, which he has held for 24 years.
Once rumors spread that Smith’s post was in jeopardy, a wide array of veterans groups, including the VFW, American Legion, and Disabled American Veterans, leapt to his defense, saying it would be an “absolute disaster” that “such an effective chairman would be removed for political reasons.” These same groups added that it would send the wrong message to U.S. troops during a time of war. It didn’t matter; Buyer is considered a “team player” and Hastert loyalist while Smith isn’t.
Why, exactly, did Smith fall out of favor with GOP leaders? It was simple: he constantly argued that Republican budgets did too little for veterans.
Smith in the past has angered party leaders by saying that stringent GOP-backed budgets undercut veterans’ programs, a sensitive subject when the Bush administration and Congress are trying to show their wartime commitment to troops and veterans.
And if there’s one thing House GOP leaders can’t tolerate, it’s lawmakers who want more money for veterans’ programs.
Appropriations Committee — Following a contentious process in which lawmakers appeared to be literally trying to buy the lucrative chairmanship, GOP leaders chose Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), because a) he raised more money for Republicans and b) he’ll be in the leadership’s pocket.
Lewis’s selection appears to leave the traditionally independent Appropriations Committee safely under the sway of the House leadership. All three candidates, a GOP aide said, were required to “jump through hoops” to prove they would cooperate closely with the White House and the speaker’s office to stave off spending pressures from colleagues in both parties.
In November 1998, then-Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) asserted in a letter to Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) that “I shall run the committee as I see fit and in the best interest of the Republican majority, with full consultation with the leadership but without being subject to the dictates of any other member of Congress.”
Such assertions of a chairman’s prerogatives are largely a thing of the past in the more centralized system controlled by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
“No matter which of these fellows was selected, this process marks a dramatic consolidation of power in the hands of a few key leadership types,” said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic chief of staff of the Appropriations Committee who is a fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Ethics Committee — As expected, Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who was part of a committee that admonished Tom DeLay’s ethics violations three times last year, has been rejected by his party.
House Republicans have decided to replace the chairman of the ethics committee, who has crossed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay so many times that the two barely speak, top leadership aides said yesterday.
The chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), has not been told his fate but said in an interview that his fellow leaders are “probably going to boot me.”
[…]
No new chairman has been selected. An official said the speaker, who by tradition names the ethics committee, is considering about 40 names. “They’re looking for folks who are not perceived to be overtly partisan — people who will be deemed fair, middle-of-the-road folks,” the official said.
Yeah, right. They had someone who fit that bill and they got rid of him as soon as they had the chance. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), author of the infamous “DeLay Rule,” continues to be the favorite to become the next chairman. A DeLay loyalist, there’s nothing non-partisan, fair, or middle-of-the-road about him.