It is difficult to overstate the role seniority and mastery of the congressional committee system has played in keeping federal spending flowing in Mississippi. It’s never more visible than when it keeps Huntington Ingalls and other Mississippi shipbuilders and suppliers busy as some of the state’s largest employers.
Mississippi’s U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker has been a champion of American shipbuilding for many years. Last week, the political stars conveniently aligned to give him an able and powerful partner in that effort – one in his own state’s delegation.
With Wicker as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and his Magnolia state colleague U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith as the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, how much control does Mississippi have over defense contracting and weapons program funding in Congress?
The basic explanation is this: In Congress, a defense program must be authorized before it can be funded. Wicker, as chair of SASC, leads the Senate’s authorization of military policy, troop levels, and military procurement programs through the National Defense Authorization Act. Hyde-Smith, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, approves the actual dollars provided for the authorized programs and weapons.
This reality gives Mississippi a “one-two punch” in directing defense spending to its home state when appropriate and rather outsized influence over the nation’s defense apparatus in several ways. Navy shipbuilding is a major way, but there are also unmanned aerial systems and aerospace technology.
Military base funding for installations like Columbus Air Force Base, Keesler, and Camp Shelby, and research grants for state universities are another.
No defense budget or supplemental package can clear the U.S. Senate without passing through their respective committees. If the Pentagon or the House take a position that threatens a weapons system or procurement program with Mississippi ties, Wicker and Hyde-Smith have the power to block, stall, or renegotiate legislation to protect Mississippi’s interests.
The new Wicker/Hyde-Smith pairing in these key strategic gatekeeping positions on defense authorization and defense appropriations puts Mississippi back in the kind of power position enjoyed by prior Mississippi congressional titans like the late U.S. Sens. John Stennis and Jim Eastland, the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and former Sen. Trent Lott, and during one unbelievable period in the 1980s that Stennis and the late U.S. Rep. Jamie Whitten controlled the Appropriations Committees in both houses of Congress.
Hyde-Smith succeeded the late Florida U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in the post after Graham’s unexpected death from a cardiac episode. Hyde-Smith's appointment repeats a familiar theme in Mississippi congressional representation: seniority and teamwork create jobs and opportunities for Mississippians.
For the better part of the last 65 years, Mississippi’s congressional delegation – in particular Mississippi’s U.S. senators – have used their seniority and deep knowledge of the congressional committee system’s defense authorization and appropriation processes to exercise extraordinary levels of control over defense spending and contracting that have directly benefited Mississippi taxpayers and defense contractors with operations in the state that provide high-quality jobs.
I am reminded of an example of how these alliances kept Mississippi workers employed – and then didn’t. In 2015, then U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and armed with the power to do so, he named himself chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. That raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill.
But Cochran had been the ranking Republican on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee since 2008. No GOP senator knew more about the subcommittee’s work than he did.
By March 2018, weeks before he stepped down from the Senate citing health issues, Cochran inserted $1.2 billion in funding for two U.S. Coast Guard national security cutters, the USCGC Calhoun and the USCGC Friedman, to be built at Ingalls in Pascagoula. Ingalls built a total of 10 cutters in the program.
The Calhoun was built and commissioned in 2024. But with Cochran no longer chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, the Department of Homeland Security canceled the building of the Friedman after a contract dispute. That’s how transitory congressional clout can be.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
15 comments:
Didn’t realize Lindsey Graham had moved to Florida!
BIG typo on lindsey graham lol, dont tell me you are using AI to write
But all govt spending is waste? So waste here in MS? Swamp? Ehhhh forget it
WTH does CH-S know about defense appropriations?
More bribing taxpayers for votes with their own money.
We must defund the police and the military and in its place hire 1 million equity warriors!! Instead of warships of will have bong loading workshops! Instead of howitzers, we will have How to Heal Your Community classes!
Bananas instead of bullets, let the rich send themselves and their sons like President Trump!
Are we running a jobs program or a War department?
Only one of those is good for lots of votes and campaign contributions.
Wooo pig SOEEEEE!
'
A little of both. An example of waste, fraud, and abuse are the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). The Navy didn't want them but some Congress-critters forced them down their throats to create jobs and presumably some palm grease. Now the Navy is parking some of them.
@11:49
LCS gave jobs to all of the HII employees who couldn’t be absorbed into the Arleigh Burke program and got laid off when the Navy took the Zumwalt program from Huntington Ingalls and gave it to General Dynamics.
And just a reminder that they do this stuff because we no longer have a globally competitive shipbuilding industry in America. So without this type of “welfare” we would have no shipbuilding industry or people with the skills to build ships.
Ingalls has been a scam from the beginning. The cost of building ships could drop to 10% of what we have to pay now. The way our government gives out ship building contracts is a big time scam. They give one shipyard the contract for the blueprints and give the contract for building the ships to another shipyard. The next contracts the shipyards will chang what each had contracted the last time. The one that had the blueprints contract will now get the contract for building the ships. The other one will get the blueprints contract.
The shipyard that has the blueprints contract will send them to the shipyard that builds the ships. The shipyard will build the ships according to the blueprints. When there is a mistake in the blueprints they will have to build the mistake into the ship. They will send for a blueprint showing the correct way it should be built. The yard that is building the ship will then be paid for building the mistake, paid for removing the mistake, and for building the mistake the right way. For every mistake both shipyards get paid extra. It is common to see the same mistake to be rebuilt only to see the new prints are wrong again. This can happen many times so both shipyards can charge for building the same mistakes over and over.
The local poors should go californicate elsewhere
@1:24
You aren't wrong.
Unfortunately, the government will spend the money on something. If it isn't paying welders, draftsmen, pipe-fitters, and project managers, it will be welfare queens and antifa/BLM protestors. Who would you rather get the money?
Say what you want about government spending. I will agree 100%. But, always, always, always, understand that a strong naval presence is vital to protecting the U.S.
One of the best explanations of this came from a Democrat, former Congressman Gene Taylor.
RMQ
Similar to the example Salter gave re the Coast Guard cutters; this power partnership is likely to be short-lived. When the Republicans lose control of the Senate this fall (thanks to the foolishness of the President by inserting his ego into various primary campaigns) they will lose seats on the Approps committee/subcommittees and likely Hyde-Smith's position on Armed Services Subcommittee.
Will be nice while it lasted, but the President's FAFO actions in primaries is going to bring the chickens home to roost.
Post a Comment