January 3, 2019 – 11:45 a.m.

Today, Senate Republicans released their proposed committee memberships for the 116th Congress, joining Senate Democrats, who had announced their proposed slates late last year. The new committee memberships will become official when ratified by Senate resolution in the coming days.

In terms of the sizes of committees, the fact that the GOP went from a 52-48 Opening Day majority in the 115th Congress to a 53-47 Opening Day majority in the 116th Congress led to a slightly larger Republican majority on a couple of committees – the tax-writing Finance Committee went from a 14-13 ratio to a 15-13 ratio and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee went from a 14-13 ratio to a 14-12 ratio.

Unlike the House, where all committees cease to exist at the end of a Congress and must be re-created and re-elected, the Senate is a continuing body, so all committees still exist and any Senator who is still in office still holds their committee assignments (see the official lists in the Senate Calendar).

Taking the transportation-related committees, in alphabetical order. In the tables, chairmen and ranking members are in boldface type, members who were on a committee in the 115th Congress but are no longer on in the 116th Congress are in strikethrough type, and new members added for the 116th Congress are in italic type.

Appropriations. There were no changes in overall membership or committee size from the 115th to the 116th. There were some changes in the seniority order at the bottom of the Republican side, but none on the Democratic side. Since members pick subcommittee chairmanships in seniority order, Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jack Reed (D-RI) are still high up and are expected to retain the chairmanship and ranking slot on the Transportation-HUD Subcommittee.

Banking. The Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which (for a long list of of historic precedent reasons) controls mass transit policy, sees no change in ratios. There are two new Republican members, Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and two new Democratic members, Tina Smith (D-MN) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

Commerce. Republicans had one vacancy from the defeat of Dean Heller (D-NV) and gained a second vacancy when Jim Inhofe (R-OK) left the committee. Those seats went to Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rick Scott (R-FL), and Blackburn apparently made Commerce her first choice, because she vaulted straight to 9th place in seniority out of 14. (Scott will be 100th in seniority in the Senate because he is waiting until his term as governor ends on January 8 to be sworn into the Senate. As such, he won’t actually be elected to the Commerce Committee until he is sworn in as a Senator.) As mentioned previously in ETW, Kyrsten Sinema and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) got the Democratic vacancies, and the Democratic membership was shrunk from 13 to 12. The panel will have new leadership on both sides of the aisle: former chairman John Thune (R-SD) had to give up the gavel to become Majority Whip and is being replace by Roger Wicker (R-MS), and ranking member Bill Nelson (D-FL) was defeated for re-election and will be replaced by Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

EPW. The Environment and Public Works Committee, which controls the federal-aid highway program as well as water infrastructure programs, sees no change in its 11 to 10 ratio or its leadership. Deb Fischer (R-NE) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) leave the panel and are replaced by Kevin Cramer and Mike Braun (R-IN), both of whom moved high up on the seniority list so it is likely that EPW was the first choice of panels for both me. There was a lot of seniority re-arranging on the Republican side, but no changes in membership or order on the Democratic side.

Finance. The powerful Finance panel, which controls taxes (and federal trust funds), gets three new Republican members – two from attrition and one from expansion. They are Jim Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Todd Young (R-IN). The two new Democrats, replacing defeated Senators, are Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV). Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) retired and is replaced (again) by former chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA). (Roll Call was first to point out that Daines and Lankford get to serve on both Appropriations and Finance, the first time this has happened since 1944.)