01.08.09
Henry Waxman gets to work
Great story by Mike Lillis in the Washington Independent:
It was no mystery that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) was intent on making environment-friendly changes when he swept the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee from beneath auto-friendly Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) in November. And this week, that house-cleaning began in earnest.
In a reshuffling that will remove several Dingell allies from key environmentally sensitive posts, Waxman melded two E&C subcommittees — the Energy & Air Quality panel and the Environment & Hazardous Materials panel — to form the Energy and Environment subcommittee, of which Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) will be the chairman, the Boston Globe reported today.
Markey, who also heads the House committee on energy independence and global warming, has long been among the most fervent congressional environmentalists, pushing for increased fuel efficiency standards and protection of the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among a long list of pet causes.
Displaced in Waxman’s reorganization will be Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat who has long protected the interests of Big Coal. Boucher, who heads the soon-to-be-disbanded Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, will instead take control of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, a post currently held by Markey. Rep. Gene Green (D-Tex.), another Dingell ally who now heads the soon-to-be-extinct Environment & Hazardous Materials panel, is apparently out of a chairmanship.
Grist writer David Roberts has a nice wrap-up today of the implications of all this reshuffling: …
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