In Congress, It's All About The Committees

Most of the work Congress does, gets done in committees. Yesterday I was over the moon when I saw one of Blue America's heroes, Orlando Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), grilling John Bovenzi of the FDIC and, Donald Kohn, vice Chair of the Fed, about the $1.2 trillion that the Bush Regime seems to have given to its pals the banksters. Kohn refused to say where the $1.2 trillion in taxes has gone-- and Grayson wasn't exactly deferential. Instead he related to him the way you'd expect a top drawer attorney to handle a hostile criminal witness-- kind of the way Grayson has been handling war profiteers for the last few years. Take a look at this clip from the House Financial Services Committee, yesterday:



I hope to see plenty more of this, and not just from Grayson, as Democrats in Congress start getting in touch with the fact that they win office to protect working families from self-entitled predators, from Bernie Madoff to the crooked CEOs who ran CitiGroup and Merrill Lynch who, respectively, walked out of the firms they flushed down the toilet with $100 million and $161 million good-bye bonuses. Tom Geoghegan, the Democrat seeking to replace Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, made it clear which side he's on today. I can't wait to see him working with Grayson and Donna Edwards! The concept of firms like this getting one cent of bailout money, while these kinds of shenanigans are going on, is outrageous if not criminal.

In any case, now that Miss McConnell has cried "uncle" and accepted that Al Franken beat Republican slug Norm Coleman in Minnesota, fixing the ratio of Senate committees with a 3-seat advantage for Democrats, the bulk of the new Senate Committee assignments have been announced. There are some of the newsworthy assignments. Little will change on the committee that is the fount of all corruption, Appropriations, as the disgraced Ted Stevens' best friend, Daniel Inouye, takes over. Jon Tester was added to the committee.

Three freshman (and one more to go) have been added to the Armed Services committee, Kay Hagan, Mark Udall and Mark Begich. Freshman Mark Warner was assigned to Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and it looks like they're holding 2 seats for Burris, Franken, Kauffman (DE), Bennet (CO) or for whoever replaces Clinton on that one too. I was happy to see Tom Udall wind up on Commerce, Science and Transportation, along with Begich and Warner. Mark Udall and Jeanne Shaheen are now on Energy and Natural Resources. The Boxer-led Committee on Environment and Public Works is a real bastion of liberals, one of the few, and the new members are Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley (with a spot open for either Burris, Franken or one of the other replacements). Shaheen also got a seat on Foreign Relations and, presumably, the two empty seats are for Kauffman and another replacement. There are three open seats on Judiciary, one probably for Burris; I have no idea who gets the other two. Aside from one open seat, it's Kay Hagan and Jeff Merkley on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, one of the committees that will be key in determining whether we get real health care reform or just more corporate bullshit. I trust Merkley in that position. I wish Merkley could be on more committees; we need senators as dedicated to working families as he is to watch out for the undue interests of the banksters. Haven't they stolen enough of our money already?




UPDATE: BLUE AMERICA VICTORS' COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS

I heard from the Speakers Office this morning that committee assignments are still being worked on and that the final decisions won't be ready until tomorrow. Meanwhile, from what I've been able to piece together, here are some of the still unofficial assignments for this year's Blue America House winners:

Donna Edwards (D-MD)- Science and Technology; Transportation and Infrastructure
Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)- Armed Sevices; Education and Labor
Steve Cohen (D-TN)- Judiciary; Transportation and Infrastructure
Mark Schauer (D-MI)- Agriculture; Transportation and Infrastructure
Dan Maffei (D-NY)- Financial Services
Tom Perriello (D-VA)- Transportation and Infrastructure; Veterans' Affairs
Gary Peters (D-MI)- Financial Services
Martin Heinrich (D-NM), elected head of the freshman class- Natural Resources; Armed Sevices
Jim Himes (D-CT)- Financial Services
Alan Grayson (D-FL)- Financial Services
Jared Polis (D-CO)- Education and Labor
Larry Kissell (D-NC)- Agriculture; Armed Services
Eric Massa (D-NY)- Armed Services; Agriculture
Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH)- Financial Services