House appropriators to gain two subcommittees

Incoming House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., is set to announce the new structure and Democratic membership of the prestigious panel for the 110th Congress later this week, including subcommittee chairmen.

The committee reorganization was made formal in a document distributed to panel members this week, according to a Democratic aide who has seen it.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., is largely on board with the plan, sources said; his panel is also expected to organize this week, although his office could not be reached for comment by presstime.

According to the aide, Obey plans to expand the number of subcommittees from 10 to 12, creating a new Financial Services Subcommittee with sweeping jurisdiction and restoring the old Legislative Branch panel as a separate subcommittee.

The former chairman, incoming House Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., reduced the number of subcommittees from 13 to 10 in 2005 and abolished Legislative Branch as a separate panel.

As expected, the new Financial Services panel will pull jurisdiction mostly from the Transportation-Treasury and Science-State-Justice panels. The remaining subcommittee structures would be realigned to match up cleanly with the Senate.

For example, defense health and related accounts would be moved back to the Defense subcommittee, leaving a smaller Military Construction-Veterans Affairs panel in its place. Likewise, responsibility for the State Department would be grouped with foreign aid programs in a combined State-Foreign Operations panel.

Obey has decided to move the Treasury Department, Postal Service, General Services Administration, Executive Office of the President, Office of Personnel Management and other general government-related agencies -- essentially the former Treasury-Postal Subcommittee -- into the new Financial Services panel.

They had formerly resided in the Transportation-Treasury panel, which also loses jurisdiction over agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, FEC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to the new subcommittee.

Funding for the federal judiciary and for the nation's capital, which filled out a Transportation-Treasury panel that many observers thought had grown too big, also will be moved to the Financial Services panel. The Transportation panel will retain jurisdiction over housing and urban development funding, focusing on infrastructure-related matters.

In keeping with its mandate over issues important to Wall Street and the economy, the new Financial Services subcommittee also gains jurisdiction over the Small Business Administration and regulatory bodies such as the SEC, FCC and FTC, which had formerly been within the jurisdiction of the Science-State-Justice panel. That panel now becomes the Commerce-Justice-Science panel, matching up with its Senate counterpart.

The remaining subcommittee jurisdictions, including Agriculture, Labor-HHS, Energy and Water, Interior-Environment and Homeland Security, are unchanged.

Yet to be finalized is the lineup of subcommittee chairmen, although most ranking Democrats are expected to assume the chairmanships.

But due to a wrinkle in Democratic committee rules, the members will conduct a special lottery this week in which they protect two of their current subcommittee assignments, and more senior members can take on a third depending on availability.

That means, for example, that Rep. James Moran, D-Va. -- who an aide said is expected to protect his slots on the Defense and Interior subcommittees -- might not be able to take over the restored Legislative Branch panel, on which he served as ranking member for several years before it was abolished.