So, in the next Congress, what changes?

[TayTay]

Sen. Kerry will Chair the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. The fact that the Bush Administration and the current Republican Party hate the idea of doing anything to support Small Business and think this kind of stuff is sort of socialist make the hearings of this committee really interesting. (Esp. when the former SBA head, Hector, Barreto was there. Sigh! What a horrendous appointee he was. Honestly, Bush could have thrown a dart at a phone book of Northern Virginia and come up with a better SBA head than Barreto. Sigh!)

Foreign Relations Committee:

Kerry will Chair the East Asian and Pacific Affairs sub-committee. This has jurisdiction over many countries, including China, North Korea and Japan. We sometimes interact with these companies (LOL!), ah, countries, so this could be important. (The Bush Admin hates NK and has recently decided to deny them access to I-Pods because the Kim Il Jung has the bomb. That's Bush Logic for ya.)

Here is the State Department site on East Asia and Pacific Affairs: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/ci/ See what I mean, that's a lot of countries.

Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee

Sen. Kerry will chair the Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation, and Competitiveness Believe it or not, there actually are government bureaus that deal with Technology. Check this out: http://www.technology.gov/
http://nttc.edu/ (Of course Sen. Byrd has his name on this. He has something named for him every ten miles or so in West Viriginia.)
http://www.nist.gov/
http://patapsco.nist.gov/ts%5Fsbir/ (Ooooh, a two-fer)
And the first resignation of a Repub appointee, since Congress changed over: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=108202&org=olpa&from=news
And many more.
Wonk heaven, btw. This should be a busy place.

Finance Committee

It is really, really good just to have a seat on this Committee. People think that the Budget Committee holds the power over spending in the government. As Lawrence O'Donnell, who used to work for this Senate Committee, pointed out on the Franken Show on 11/28/06, the Finance Committee oversees all spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs and about 80% of the budget of the US Govt. (If not more.) It's good to be here. Nice place. Rarified air. Sen. Kerry is on the subcommittees that set the US spending on Health Care, Social Security and Debt Reduction for the US Government.

Sen. Kerry chairs the Subcommittee on Long-term Growth and Debt Reduction (Don't yawn. I'm serious.)

Oh look, another two-fer http://ebri.org/pdf/publications/testimony/t146.pdf

The Treasury Secretary comes here sometimes and says why the Bush Admin laughs when they hear about things like 'debt-reduction' and why anyone would want to reduce it. http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/po1015.htm

Libertarians are, in the whole but I can't vouch for all of them mind you, quite taken with the idea of reducing the debt of the US Govt. Apparently they take this stuff quite seriously: http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-ce09282006-2.html


So, there are some places to peruse, at your leisure, over your Holidays, to figure out what the hell will be going on in a Congress in which it actually matters that Democrats show up for work. (And btw, what exactly do Senators do, when they actually are given something to do anyway? Well, they do Senate stuff.)

[wisteria]

1. Thanks Tay, I am going to save this page for future reference. n/t

[ProSense]

2. Excellent , thanks!

This session of Congress will definitely be interesting!