Georgia is set to lose 71.5 years of Capitol Hill experience at year’s end, as five delegation members depart.
Those who remain cannot immediately summon that kind of seniority. But they are jockeying to expand their influence as Congress returns this week for its lame-duck session,.
“It’s normal for any state’s legislative clout to sort of ebb and flow,” said Bob Hurt, a lobbyist and former top aide to Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat who controlled the Armed Services Committee in the days when power flowed Georgia’s way.
“The big difference here is you have an unusually large number of new members for our delegation. … You can already see adjustments being made.”
The most important shift in the 114th Congress is a move to all-Republican control. The Georgia delegation is now the most Republican it has ever been, at 75 percent, so it will gain accordingly.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is expected to take over as chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, assuming Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., seizes the top spot on the Intelligence Committee. Formal word could come as soon as this week.
“I’ve been in every VA hospital and 90 percent of the clinics (in Georgia) since the first of August,” Isakson said at the election night party for senator-elect David Perdue.
“I have some very specific ideas of ways to help (new secretary) Bob McDonald help the VA and help our veterans. The VA is a single-payer health care system without competition, and there’s reasons why doctors in the VA see only two thirds of the patients of private sector doctors. That’s the system. We have an 80’s delivery system in the 21st century, and that just doesn’t work.”
Isakson said his chief immediate concern is implementing a VA reform law Congress passed earlier this year following a series of scandals in which veterans faced lengthy waits for care and benefits.
Perdue has said he wants spots on the agriculture and armed services committees – though the latter is highly competitive and even in the freshman class, military veterans such as Iowa’s Joni Ernst and Arkansas’ Tom Cotton could have the leg up.
In the House, Rep. Rob Woodall, a Lawrenceville Republican, is mounting a campaign for the No. 5 spot at the GOP leadership table as chairman of the policy committee. Woodall was the interim chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative wing of the House GOP caucus, over the summer.
The Capitol Hill press has declared Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., the favorite in the three man race for policy chairman. The closed-door vote is Thursday.
In addition, Woodall is seeking a spot on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, as both of Georgia’s members of that panel are not returning.
Reps. Lynn Westmoreland and Tom Price, both elected in 2004, are now Georgia’s senior House Republicans.
Price, of Roswell, is set to become chairman of the Budget Committee, following the footsteps of the highly influential Rep. Paul Ryan.
Westmoreland is not sure whether he will stay as the deputy chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, but he continues to be a part of the leadership’s “whip team.”
“We’ve both been pretty involved in the goings on of both the conference and the party,” Westmoreland said.
Rep. Tom Graves, in only his third full term, is rising fast on the Appropriations Committee and is expected to secure a subcommittee chairmanship in January – a key post known in Capitol parlance as a “cardinal.”
Outgoing Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican who lost a bid for Senate, was a high-profile cardinal overseeing health care spending. Graves’ post is likely to cover something less glamorous such as the legislative branch.
Georgia’s House Democrats – though marginalized in the minority – hold considerable seniority.
Rep. Sanford Bishop of Albany, first elected in 1992, is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee controlling military construction and veterans affairs spending.
Elected in 1986, Atlanta Rep. John Lewis is one of the top Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means panel. Though he does not have a formal position in the leadership structure, Lewis’ position as a civil rights hero gives him an ear whenever he needs it.
Rep. David Scott of Atlanta pointed out that he is now the second-ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. He said Rep. John Barrow’s loss “breaks my heart,” as the number of Democrats in the delegation dwindles to four, but he said they have a history of working across party lines on issues of importance to the state such as seeking federal money for the Port of Savannah.
“Georgia need not worry,” Scott said.
Hurt, the lobbyist and former Nunn aide, said the bigger problem for Georgia is recent congressional gridlock that has allowed the executive branch to fill the power vacuum.
“We tend to measure these things by delegation seniority on committees and their unity of purpose on state parochial issues, and that’s important, but really the first job is for Congress to make itself relevant again,” Hurt said. “It doesn’t matter if the state delegation is senior and well-placed if the train is not running.”
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