The Clarion-Ledger Editorial, 11/23/8
Democrats will control the White House and hold dominating majorities in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House in the 111th Congress.
Gone are the days when Mississippians chaired both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, as did the late U.S. Rep. Jamie Whitten and the late U.S. Sen. John C. Stennis in the late 1980s. Gone are the days such as 1996 when former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott was one of the three most powerful men in the nation as Senate majority meader along with then-President Bill Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Gone are the days when U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran served as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee as well.
But with the voluntary decision of Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to relinquish leadership and the defeat of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the pair will no longer be leading the Senate Appropriations Committee. Replacing Byrd as committee chairman will be Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, 84, who completed his pre-World War II U.S. Army training at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby south of Hattiesburg. Cochran, a senator for three decades, has been the committee’s ranking Republican since 2005 but Stevens has remained a major player, especially on defense issues.
