The Senate Commerce Committee formally approved a new subcommittee structure yesterday, creating a new climate change panel, an oceans subcommittee, and a disaster prevention and prediction body.
All Republican members of the full committee with the exception of Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and former Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) will chair a subcommittee. McCain was said to be interested in heading up the climate change panel but chose to take the reins of an Armed Services subcommittee instead, making him ineligible to chair a Commerce subcommittee under Republican rules, according to Committee spokeswoman Melanie Alvord. She said members are “in the process” of choosing subcommittee assignments.
Stevens proposed the new subcommittees in early January. The climate change subcommittee will be the first solely dedicated to the politically contentious topic in either chamber. Its creation signals a shift in the way the committee treats the issue compared to the 108th Congress, when McCain used the full committee platform to push his effort to establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Andy Davis, spokesman for committee ranking member Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), said the new subcommittee does not necessarily indicate that global warming will receive less attention by members. “You can make the argument that this is giving it a greater emphasis than it had before,” he said.
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