Monday, December 25, 2006
When the Democrats take control of the House next month, the new majority staff directors of the major committees will range from grizzled Capitol Hill veterans to relatively fresh-faced newcomers. All anticipate that their committees will mount aggressive oversight of the Bush administration. Here is a sampling of those staff chiefs. Senate Democratic staff directors will be featured on Tuesday's Federal Page.
Armed Services
Erin C. Conaton, who holds a doctorate in foreign relations, will be in charge of the 67-member staff of a committee with plans for aggressive oversight. No one expects any radical departures under the new chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), but Skelton has promised hearings on Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terrorism and what he called "fixing U.S. forces."
Conaton, 36, who will become the committee's second female staff director, joined the Democratic staff in 2001 after three years as research staff director for the U.S. Commission on National Security -- better known as the Hart-Rudman commission.
Despite the new emphasis on closer oversight of administration policy, Conaton said the committee's traditional bipartisanship would endure. For one thing, she said, "we have an integrated bipartisan staff that serves all the members, so we are keeping on board a number of the current [Republican] staff."
Appropriations Committee
Robert Nabors, the new staff director, is a native of Fort Dix, N.J. Nabors worked for five years in the Office of Management and Budget before joining Appropriations in 2001. He has been the Democratic staff director since 2004. Nabors holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master's from the University of North Carolina.
He said his top priorities for 2007 are to finish work on the nine spending bills that Congress failed to pass last year and to increase oversight. He said he also wants to make sure that bills passed by the new Congress will strike the right balance between investing in critical programs and being financially responsible, a Democratic theme.
Budget Committee
Thomas S. Kahn, the new staff director and chief counsel, is a former Wall Street lawyer who has been the Democratic staff director for the past decade. Before that, Kahn worked as chief counsel for Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), and as a staffer on the House Democratic Policy Committee. Upon coming to the Hill after a year as a corporate lawyer at New York's Sullivan and Cromwell, Kahn became chief counsel and acting staff director of a House subcommittee on trade and banking.
Kahn, 51, has twin goals on the Budget Committee, one obvious and one, less so. The obvious: "Writing and passing a federal budget that is both fiscally responsible and at the same time funds critical national priorities," he said.
"I think the other challenge," he said, "is for the Congress to restore its traditional role as a co-equal branch with the executive, and to maintain the system of checks and balances that has eroded over the last six years."
Energy and Commerce Committee
Dennis Fitzgibbons, a veteran of the committee staff, will become chief of staff of a panel with wide-ranging jurisdiction and that will be chaired once again by powerful Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the longest-serving House member.
Fitzgibbons, 51, left the AFL-CIO in 1988 to become the committee's communications director, then jumped to deputy staff director from 1992 to 2000, before joining DaimlerChrysler's Washington office as director of public policy. In his days on the committee, Fitzgibbons helped map out Dingell's myriad investigations, especially on defense and energy issues.
That Fitzgibbons is heading back to the Hill is a testimony to the loyalty Dingell engenders, Fitzgibbons said. "I remembered all that could be accomplished in the majority and that lure is very strong," he said.
Dingell has said he wants to explore how to spread advanced diesel engines in the U.S. market, and he is leery of the push by other Democrats to mandate higher fuel-economy standards. He also wants to investigate alleged currency manipulation by foreign competitors, as well as other barriers to U.S. exports. His biggest mark may be made in a Democratic push to expand health insurance coverage -- and perhaps relieve ailing automakers of the huge health insurance "legacy costs" posed by their union workers and retirees.
Government Reform Committee
Philip Schiliro will serve as staff director under Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). The committee, which had a relatively bipartisan tone under its outgoing chairman, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), oversees virtually every government agency.
Schiliro, 50, attended Hofstra University and then received his law degree from Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. He came to the Hill in 1982 and joined Waxman's team later that year, rising quickly to become his chief of staff, a position he will continue to hold into next year. He took a brief sojourn to work for the Senate Democratic leadership in 2004.
Schiliro said oversight of Iraq, related contracting issues and the response to Hurricane Katrina have ranked highly among the committee's priorities -- and would continue to be among the top issues. "Fraud, waste and abuse, those are going to be our focus," Schiliro said, adding that the committee also would study "government agencies that used to work very well and now seem to be ineffective.
He said another top issue for the committee will be the use and misuse of government secrecy.
Homeland Security Committee
Jessica R. Herrera-Flanigan one of the youngest full committee staff directors in Congress, foresees "aggressive oversight" of the troubled Department of Homeland Security as one the committee's top priorities .
The panel's agenda will also include reorganizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and mass transit and rail security.
Even while the Republicans were in charge, the panel's relations with DHS have been "mixed," she said. But she added that the Bush administration should understand, "We're not interested in playing 'gotcha.' We want to fix the problems."
Herrera-Flanigan, a 36-year-old Harvard Law graduate and former federal prosecutor and cyber-crime expert, has been at the committee since 2003, working as counsel to the cyber-security subcommittee and more recently as Democratic staff director.
"We've had a good relationship across the aisle," she said of the committee, and it's been "very smooth handling space and office changes," which can be oft-contentious matters as the committee changes over. "We all want to get to the same place" in making the country safe, she said. "The question is how we get there."
Just in case, she's got a first-degree black belt in tae kwon do.
Judiciary Committee
Perry Apelbaum will be the majority staff director under Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), as the committee confronts some of the most explosive cultural and legal issues that come before Congress.
Apelbaum, 48, graduated from the University of Michigan and received his law degree from Harvard. He served at a prominent Washington law firm before coming to Capitol Hill in 1991 to work on the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on economic and commercial law. He rose through the ranks to his current position, where he said he has worked to block GOP-backed laws on key social issues.
"Judiciary has so many high-profile interests -- just seeing the intersection of law and politics and policy," Apelbaum said. "Most of the past few years we were playing defense with what the Republicans were doing -- whether their anti-choice agenda, term limits or their restrictive immigration reform."
Ways and Means
Janice A. Mays, the new staff director, is an experienced hand on Capitol Hill who is widely recognized as the tax expert who helped write the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
A graduate of Wesleyan College, the University of Georgia School of Law and Georgetown University Law School, Mays has worked on Capitol Hill for 31 years. She was staff director for the committee once before, from 1993 to 1995, when the Democrats were last in power in the House. She has been the committee's minority staff director since then.
Mays, 55, said the committee's priorities have not yet been set. "We are the guys who are saying -- and we mean it -- that we would like to be bipartisan," Mays said. "The last few years have been divisive internally, and we would like to try and reimpose democracy on the committee. We're hoping the members get together and set those priorities."
However, Mays added that the committee is likely to first focus on "low-hanging fruit," upon which Democrats and Republicans can find common ground, ranging from technical corrections to earlier legislation to the question of how to close the tax gap and collect taxes that have already been imposed but have gone unpaid.
Other Committees
Agriculture Committee: Rob Larew Education and Workforce Committee: Mark Zuckerman Resources Committee: Jim Zoia Rules Committee: John Daniel Science Committee: Chuck Atkins Transportation and Infrastructure: David Heymsfeld Veterans Affairs: Malcom A. Shorter Select Committee on Intelligence: Mike Delaney.
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Staff writers Al Kamen, Lyndsey Layton and Elizabeth Williamson and special correspondent Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.
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