Extreme unction for VA-HUD subcommittee?
As we observed a few days back, the VA-HUD subcommittee appears headed for dissolution: at least Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) thinks so:
If the House Republican leadership continues with its plan to overhaul the appropriations process, a jurisdictional mismatch among House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees is all but inevitable, Senate GOP aides said.
And the Senator most affected, the estimable Kit Bond of
Senate appropriators appear resigned to elimination of the VA-HUD panel. The question is whether the House and Senate will redistribute the subcommittee’s current workload in the same way.
“I will work with the chairman to make sure they have a workable structure,” said Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., Senate VA-HUD Subcommittee chairman. “Our keeping their jurisdiction while they blew up theirs is impossible. I could not conference VA-HUD if we had one committee while the other side had five committees.”
Judgment may come soon:
House GOP leaders have given Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., until Wednesday to finish talks on the plan with his Senate counterpart, Thad Cochran, R-Miss.
