The House Republican Steering Committee has finished selecting chairs for the 119th Congress. And this will come as a shock to no one, but we have some thoughts about what happened.
A lot of white guys. The steering committee selected a lot of white men to lead panels across the Capitol. Of the 16 elected committee chairs, 15 of them are white men. The only exception is Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), whose maternal grandparents immigrated from Mexico.
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) — who ran for House Foreign Affairs Committee chair — lost to Mast, robbing Republicans of a woman as a full committee chair. And Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) lost to Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) for chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, which means there will be no Black men leading GOP panels either. In fact, Republicans have never had a Black lawmaker chairing a major House committee, as far as we can tell.
Speaker Mike Johnson has said that Republicans have an “embarrassment of riches” in choosing members to lead committees. But those riches apparently don’t include any women or people of color.
Leadership’s power withers. Louisiana has seven votes on the House Republican Steering Committee. Yet the Bayou State — the home of Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise — took two losses this week in the inner sanctum of the GOP leadership.
Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) — who lost his seat on steering in a purge of Kevin McCarthy allies — topped Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) to become the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Scalise backed Barr but did not whip votes or speak on Barr’s behalf in the steering session.
And Wagner got walloped on the first ballot of a four-way race by Mast for the Foreign Affairs Committee gavel. Scalise went all in for Wagner, whipping members and speaking on the Missourian’s behalf in the closed steering meeting.
The truth is Wagner’s defeat is a stinging loss for Scalise. He’s gone all in just twice for committee chairs — for Wagner and for Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) when she successfully sought to become Appropriations Committee chair. But, as we first detailed Thursday morning, Johnson’s indifference was read as support for Mast, robbing Wagner of the win. An opportunity to chair a committee may not come along again for Wagner, which her allies have been chattering about since this defeat.
What is the point of being a House Republican leader if you can’t get your preferred committee chairs into place?
Crypto’s winning streak continues. The ascendance of President-elect Donald Trump has ushered in a heyday for cryptocurrency. Hill’s victory on the Financial Services panel is also a big deal for the digital asset industry.
The Arkansas Republican spent this Congress as the first chair of a subcommittee dedicated to crypto policy. That work helped solidify Hill’s reputation among the sector’s advocates.
Which is no small feat after crypto’s rough and tumble last couple of years. The collapse of FTX in late 2022 evaporated much of the sector’s political goodwill in Washington.
Very few lawmakers have played a more central role in rehabilitating the sector’s reputation than Hill. His credibility in financial policy goes further than most, and we wrote this weekend about how Hill’s advocacy has already shaped an incoming fight over crypto’s “debanking” woes.
It’s already been a big week for crypto, as far as political will goes. The industry heaped significant pressure on Congress to stop Caroline Crenshaw from being renominated to a term on the Securities and Exchange Commission as one final act from the Senate Banking Committee. Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), helped kill the nomination Thursday by denying Democrats a waiver they needed after attendance hiccups in the morning.
Reminder: The steering committee will begin populating the “A” committees today — Financial Services, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means and Appropriations. Read about some of those aspiring members here.
