Two Senate committees have named subcommittee leaders this week who will be in charge of transportation policy during this new 119th Congress.

Appropriations. From the moment that Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced last year that he would be stepping down as Leader, making him eligible to chair a subcommittee once again, we have been waiting for him to set off a game of Musical Chairs at Senate Appropriations, since the Senate still runs on the seniority system and McConnell has 16 more years of seniority on Appropriations than does the next most senior Republican.

As predicted, McConnell took the big Defense subcommittee away from full committee chairman Susan Collins (R-ME). There were weeks of speculation as to what, if any, gavel she would take, and in the end she decided not to take one at all. Thus, Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) retains chairmanship of the Transportation-HUD Subcommittee.

There was much more activity on the Democratic side because they lost three Senators to retirement or defeat and because, two years ago, they instituted a “share the wealth” rule that means that Senators who also have the head job on a major standing committee cannot also have first choice of a good Appropriations subcommittee, they instead have to wait in the back of the line. Two years ago, this is what caused Jack Reed (D-RI), who should have had second pick, to lose Transportation-HUD and wind up with the runt gavel, Legislative Branch. (This time, Martin Heinrich (D-NM) has been elevated to the ranking member post on Energy and Natural Resources, so he had to give up the Agriculture Subcommittee on Appropriations and wound up with Leg Branch instead.)

The Dem side saw a large game of musical chairs because Jon Tester (D-MT) lost, which freed up Defense to go to Chris Coons (D-DE), who had to vacate State/Foreign Operations, which went to Brian Schatz, who then had to give up Transportation-HUD, which now goes to Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who is new to Appropriations.

The full announcement of all Appropriations subcommittee members is here, but here is the full membership for Transportation-HUD:

Environment and Public Works. The EPW panel continues to have three “E” subcommittees (Air-Climate-Nuclear, Fisheries-Wildlife-Water, and Chemical-Waste-Etc.) and just one on the “PW” side – the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) remains the head Republican on that panel, but with Mark Kelly (D-AZ) taking over the Clean Air subpanel, that has cleared the way for freshman Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) to be ranking minority member on the T&I Subcommittee.

Remember that, so far, EPW has developed its highway and water infrastructure bills on the traditional basis of “Big Four unanimity” which means that the chairman and ranking minority member of the full committee, and the chairman and ranking minority member of the subcommittee, come up with the basic draft of a bill together, with all four agreeing to everything that is in the bill, and then with all four having to agree on accepting any amendments later on in the process.

This is why the highway title of the IIJA, in 2021, under a Democratic majority, was almost identical to the highway bill put forward by the committee in 2019, under a Republican majority, that didn’t go anywhere. Because the first was a joint Barrasso-Carper-Capito-Cardin work product, and the second was a joint Carper-Capito-Cardin-Cramer work product that used the first bill as a starting point.

However, given the pull to the right that the Trump Presidency (Mark II) is giving to Senate Republicans, and given that new EPW ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has much less experience in cutting bipartisan deals with Republicans than his predecessor Carper, we are not at all confident that the EPW panel will be able to successfully develop transportation reauthorization this time using the traditional Big Four development path.

The full lineup of the Senate T&I Subcommittee is below.