House Republicans avoided a public fight for leadership positions but ignited an internal battle. GOP takeover prompts turf wars

House Republicans avoided a public fight for leadership positions in the new Congress but have ignited an internal war by considering a sweeping overhaul of committee jurisdictions.

Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner said Thursday he will “encourage” debate about restructuring committees, which could have major implications for policies including energy, health care and homeland security.


“I think that it’s appropriate for a new majority to look at how we can best do our work for the American people,” Boehner told reporters, later adding, “The conversation that’s under way that involves virtually half of our committees is a dialogue that we should have.”

Lawmakers made a series of presentations Thursday to the GOP transition working group, and the ideas could reshape the landscape of committee jurisdictions for years to come.

The Homeland Security Committee, for instance, is “talking about doing a major shift to consolidate homeland-security-related issues,” Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, leader of the Transition Team Working Group on House and Conference Rules, told POLITICO. Other suggestions include moving oversight of the Coast Guard from Transportation and Infrastructure to Homeland Security and shifting intellectual property rights from Judiciary to Science and Technology.

The public maneuvering started in earnest when incoming Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings of Washington made a play Thursday morning to wrest jurisdiction over energy from the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

Hastings argues that the massive energy panel, which passed climate and health care legislation in the 111th Congress, has more on its plate than it can handle, including energy, health care, technology, the Food and Drug Administration and consumer protection.

“In terms of legislative power, it is a Goliath,” Hastings wrote of Energy and Commerce in a letter to fellow Republicans. “This is the committee that spawned both Obamacare and the Democrats’ cap-and-trade national energy tax.”

But while Hastings’s proposal has received a mixed reception on Capitol Hill — Energy and Commerce members, predictably, blasted it — GOP leaders appear to be encouraging talk of a shake-up.

Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia said leadership is open to any ideas that will best further its agenda to boost job creation, slash federal spending and shrink the size of federal government. GOP leadership is “in the process of allowing these kinds of things to be presented to the transition team,” he said.

It’s unclear which way Boehner and company are leaning. “The only thing that Speaker-elect Boehner said was that we want to have discussion, think outside the box, be creative; sometime, we’ll make a final decision,” Bishop said.

Jurisdictional battles aren’t uncommon when the House majority flips.

“It makes sense for the new guys coming in to try to put their organizational stamp on the House,” said a former House Democratic leadership aide.

Hastings has cited other examples of committee overhauls, including those in 1994 and 2001, when House GOP leaders sliced the Securities and Exchange Commission and property and casualty insurance out of Energy and Commerce and moved them into the new House Financial Services Committee.

“Listen, the question is, Was this done? Yeah, there’s precedent for it. That’s the bottom line. That’s how it came about,” Hastings said.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican expected to use the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate the Obama administration, also suggested turning the spotlight on how Congress works.

“I’d hope the House and Senate, if not now, through the next couple of years, would look to try to harmonize whatever it is they do,” Issa said. “I’m not weighing in on anyone’s jurisdiction, but ... when people are being asked to look at jurisdiction, they should look at whether it sends a good working relationship between members and staff on both sides of the dome, or whether it creates a situation in which it goes to one committee here and two committees there and vice versa.”

But while minor committee shake-ups could gain traction, dramatic changes such as moving energy out of Energy and Commerce are heavier lifts.

“It will not be successful,” said former Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), who is fighting to reclaim the gavel. “You don’t spend four years getting back into the majority and immediately go into cannibal mode.”

And a GOP House member serving on the steering committee said it won’t happen. “Moving jurisdictions is too hard,” the lawmaker said.

Incoming House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica of Florida also wants to keep the peace, saying, “I don’t see a need to move any of the jurisdictions around.”

For his part, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the resources panel, supports Hastings’s bid but doesn’t think it’ll get very far.

“Go for it, Doc. It’s going to fail, but go for it,” Rahall told POLITICO. “That’s the only thing every Democrat and every Republican on Energy and Commerce agree on.”

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), an Energy and Commerce member, also opposes Hastings’s idea but told the task force about other divided issue areas that could be addressed, including Medicare, energy derivatives and veterans’ health care.

“You’ve got all these split jurisdictions all over the place,” Whitfield said. “So the argument I was making was that it was irresponsible to take a rifle shot to try to get more people on one committee by expanding its jurisdiction. If they’re going to do that, they need to look at every committee. They need to re-evaluate all the duplication, and they need to fix it.”

Key Democrats, meanwhile, mostly favor leaving things as they are.

“I don’t see any logic to it, and it looks like a power grab,” said outgoing Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). “It would be very unfair to take away jurisdiction from a committee that members have served on for years.”

Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey also opposes the bid to add power to the Natural Resources Committee, even though he’s expected to be that panel’s top Democrat next year.