The head of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday said he expects fewer policy riders to be included in spending legislation in the new Congress than in the one that just ended -- including those designed to rein in environmental programs.

Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said in a brief interview with E&E Daily that he hopes the focus will remain on spending when Congress moves legislation in the coming months to resolve government and mandatory spending issues and raise the federal debt limit, not on extraneous issues.

"I would hope we would have fewer rather than more, and the negotiations between us and the Senate, I would like that to be over spending levels," he said.

Those negotiations could be bruising, but Rogers said he has a good relationship with his counterparts in both chambers -- Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the ranking House appropriator, and incoming Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), expected to become the committee's ranking member. He said the four plan to meet soon to discuss the path forward.

Republicans offered hundreds of policy riders to spending legislation in the 112th Congress, including many to pare back U.S. EPA's power to promulgate air and water quality standards. Almost none of them cleared the Senate, with a few exceptions, including a rider to delay enforcement of Department of Energy standards requiring more efficient light bulbs.

House Democrats yesterday said they believe their Republican colleagues have learned that the appropriations process is not an effective way to legislate on environmental issues.

"I don't think they're going to go after EPA on the policy issues; I just think it's going to be a policy of attrition of resources," said Rep. James Moran (D-Va.), top Democrat on the House subcommittee responsible for funding EPA. By giving EPA and other agencies less resources to enforce rules, Congress can achieve the same goal without having to do battle with the Senate over policy riders, he said.

"I don't want that to happen, because I think it's easier to beat back the riders than it is to beat back the spending cuts," he said.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said that tacking policy items onto the so-called fiscal cliff bills would create messaging problems for Republicans.

"The more they freight it down with, let's say, anti-Obamacare, anti-environmental issues, that get away from the business at hand -- namely, the budget -- the weaker it makes their argument," he said. "So that's a tactical decision they'll have to make."

Environmentalists are also hopeful that the new Congress will moderate the number of anti-EPA votes occurring in the House.

"The 112th Congress launched every missile they could at the EPA, and every objective assessment would show that virtually all of their attacks fell short," said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Republicans in the new Congress must decide, he said, "whether to waste their time lobbing missiles and throwing tantrums without those efforts becoming law."

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said the strategy had proved equally ineffective as a political tool. Efforts in the last Congress to make Democrats like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) take tough votes in support of EPA regulations backfired, he said, and Republicans might look for new ways to score points with voters.

"Overall, the EPA will be a somewhat less viable target than it was two or three years ago," he said.

But despite Rogers' position, other key Republicans said that members would continue to offer amendments on issues they care deeply about, even if they face long odds in becoming enacted.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), top Republican on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, said he expects members to offer about as many riders to must-pass spending legislation this winter and spring as in previous cycles, because "members want to."

"They hope to pass them. That's why they keep bringing them up," he said, adding that riders would appear only on federal spending legislation, not other bills Congress will take up in the near term to raise the debt ceiling or provide aid for Superstorm Sandy victims.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said that appropriations riders might not be ideal but offer an opportunity. "In a perfect world, you reopen the Clean Air Act and you really go through and make some changes to the law and some changes to the EPA," he said. "But we don't operate in a perfect world."

With a Democratic president and Senate, the appropriations process offers one of the few opportunities available to the House to enact policy, he said.

"By default, you fall back to doing some things on the appropriations process that, as part of a larger bill, can't be deleted," he said.

Reporter Jeremy P. Jacobs contributed.

A key House panel will focus its efforts in the 113th Congress on finding a home for the country's nuclear waste, developing standards for coal ash and conducting oversight on U.S. EPA's efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing, its chairman said yesterday.

Illinois Rep. John Shimkus (R) indicated that his Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy will pick up largely where it left off in 2012, when he was also chairman.

"I love serving on this committee, as it has its roots in the commerce clause of the Constitution and was created back in 1795," Shimkus said in a statement after he was sworn in yesterday.

A top priority, Shimkus said, is finding a long-term solution to nuclear waste storage. The panel held several hearings on the issue -- and, specifically, the controversial planned Yucca Mountain, Nev., waste repository -- in the last Congress, and likely will again this session.

The Nuclear Energy Institute's president, Marvin Fertel, said at the end of last year that he anticipates legislation to be floated this year to address nuclear waste storage. Yucca Mountain will likely continue to be a sticking point, he said, as House Republicans have pushed for the Nevada repository, while there has been less focus on Yucca Mountain in the Senate (E&E Daily, Dec. 13, 2012).

Shimkus said his subcommittee will also focus on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, or fracking. Specifically, he said the panel will work to "ensure that [EPA] does not attempt to intervene in regulation of oil and gas industry exploration ... which states have been successfully regulating on their own for many years."

The Republican said his panel will continue its oversight of the Department of Homeland Security's Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards, or CFATS, which are designed to secure chemical plants from terrorist attacks and thefts.

The program has been under fire since a leaked internal memo revealed widespread mismanagement a year ago. DHS has repeatedly testified that it has taken steps to fix the program, though House appropriators have remained skeptical and even threatened to cut funding last year (E&E Daily, Sept. 21, 2012).

Shimkus' panel passed legislation in 2011 that would extended the CFATS program for seven years. That bill, as well as others, stalled after the memo was leaked (E&E Daily, Jan. 27, 2012).

Coal ash

It's no surprise to industry leaders or the environmental community that Shimkus is also prioritizing legislation to pre-empt U.S. EPA coal ash regulations. Measures giving states wide enforcement powers for ash dumps passed in the House and garnered 27 co-sponsors in the Senate during the last Congress.

West Virginia Rep. David McKinley has been a leader on the issue for Republicans and said he will likely renew his push for a bill soon and explain it to the new set of incoming lawmakers. "That means we have to educate them again," he said in an interview. "Energy is going to be very high" on the list of priorities, he added.

The bill lost several Senate supporters during the elections, including Democrats Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Jim Webb of Virginia, both of whom retired. However, coal industry leaders feel the bill is perhaps the only measure taking aim at EPA with a chance of passing in the Senate. New Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, for example, supported the bill in the House.

The question remains whether the GOP-led House will advance a bill introduced by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) last year, meant to attract more Democrats, or move forward with its own. "I want to see what their tweaks are," McKinley said.

He added that lawmakers were also pushing EPA on the issue, hoping the agency refrains from designating coal ash as hazardous in its forthcoming rulemaking. Recycling companies say that would hurt reuse efforts.

"There are all kinds of conversations taking place," McKinley said.

He said a leadership change at EPA -- Administrator Lisa Jackson has announced she is stepping down -- likely will not change the regulatory landscape.

"I don't want a repeat of what happened in Libya when we helped topple [Moammar] Gadhafi and then we wound up having al-Qaida." Asked to clarify, McKinley said, "I'm saying sometimes the known is better than unknown. Let's make sure that we have the right person [at EPA]. And let's see whether we want to go to the mat against them; maybe it's someone we can work with."

The environmental community wants lawmakers to leave EPA alone to finish its coal ash rulemaking, expected sometime this year. And they are skeptical that any bill would meet their standards.

"Maybe there would be the potential for a compromise, something that industry and the environmental community could live with," said Environmental Integrity Project attorney Lisa Widawsky-Hallowell in an interview. "We are so far from legislation that could come close to protecting human health and the environment."

Reporter Nick Juliano contributed.

Depending on when he formally takes the reins at the State Department, John Kerry may find himself facing an early decision on whether to recommend approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which environmentalists have vociferously opposed on grounds that it would be devastating for climate change.

For now, the Massachusetts Democrat is declining to say how he would decide.

"I'm not going to comment on that now," Kerry said on his way to the Senate floor yesterday when asked whether Keystone should be approved. "I've got confirmation hearings -- you'll hear about it."

Environmentalists in general are optimistic about Kerry's nomination to take over for Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State (E&ENews PM, Dec. 21, 2012). He led the effort three years ago to push a cap-and-trade bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions, although he ultimately was unsuccessful, and he has been vocal about the need to confront climate change.

The fate of the Keystone pipeline, which would transport crude extracted from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Texas, is seen as a key early test of President Obama's second term. The administration has signaled that a final decision could come within the next three months.

TransCanada, which hopes to build the pipeline, has said it is optimistic its permit to cross the U.S.-Canada border ultimately will be approved, although local and national environmental groups continue to fight it on several fronts, including through lawsuits and occupations along the pipeline's route aiming to halt construction.

Kerry, who currently serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has previously said he would study the pipeline closely but has not taken an explicit position on whether it should be constructed. He voted against a measure aimed at overturning Obama's rejection of the pipeline, calling the ensuing controversy a "completely trumped-up, phony issue" (ClimateWire, March 9, 2012).

Obama rejected the pipeline last year, citing concerns related to its route through Nebraska. TransCanada has since rerouted the line, and Nebraska regulators recently completed a new environmental review.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), one of Keystone's biggest proponents, said he would urge Kerry to support the pipeline but stopped short of committing to employing procedural tactics to block the nomination in order to extract concessions on its approval.

"It's certainly something I'm going to discuss with him," Hoeven said in a brief interview yesterday. "Where it goes from there, it's too soon to say."

Of Oklahoma's two new Republican congressmen, Rep. Jim Bridenstine certainly made the bigger splash on his first day on the job.

Bridenstine was one of just a dozen Republicans who stood up yesterday and voted against Ohio Rep. John Boehner's second term as speaker of the House. Bridenstine, a former Navy pilot and tea party favorite from the Tulsa-based 1st District, cast his vote for Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

Bridenstine's fellow Sooner State freshman, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R), who hails from the sprawling 2nd District that includes most of eastern Oklahoma, chose to follow the party line and support Boehner.

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Just after Boehner had collected enough votes to secure his second term, Bridenstine stepped off the House floor and explained that his vote was simply a reflection of the philosophy he took into his campaign last year against six-term Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.). Bridenstine's six-point primary win over Sullivan was one of the big upsets of the 2012 cycle.

"I challenged an incumbent Republican in a Republican primary, and I thought it was because our country is going in the wrong direction and that we needed new leadership," he said. "Consistent with that message, I made an effort to vote for somebody else" for speaker.

Asked what was wrong with Boehner, Bridenstine pointed to the Republican Party's performance in the 2012 elections.

"We lost seats in the House, we lost the Senate, we lost the presidency, and I just thought it was time for new leadership," he said. "But [Boehner] won. ... He's the Republican guy, and I'm going to be all behind him."

Bridenstine added that he is not concerned about the fallout that might be coming his way as a result of his vote, before turning to greet his father, who told a reporter he was proud of his son.

'We don't create jobs by pushing paper'

To judge by personality alone, Bridenstine might seem the less likely of the two new Oklahoma members to rock the boat on his first day on the job.

"He's very methodical, very quiet," fellow Oklahoma Rep. James Lankford (R) said before the vote for speaker. "As ironic as it is, he's in a very public role and he seems to be a very private guy."

Mullin, meanwhile, is a self-made businessman whose successful plumbing business and home improvement radio talk show on a Tulsa radio station have made him something of a local celebrity in eastern Oklahoma. He captured the seat after the retirement of Rep. Dan Boren -- the only Democrat in the Sooner State delegation -- winning a competitive Republican primary and a competitive general election.

Mullin "is very laid back," Lankford observed. "He's going to wear boots as much as he's going to wear anything."

But despite their differences in style and preference of party leader, both Mullin, 35, and Bridenstine, 37, come to their first elected positions with similar legislative priorities, especially when it comes to energy and regulatory matters.

"We have an over-regulatory environment, and it prohibits us from doing what we need to do to produce the energy that Oklahoma can produce," Bridenstine said yesterday. "What we need to do is undo the regulatory burden that's on these companies and get America drilling again."

Mullin expressed a similar frustration.

"We have over 26,000 square miles [in the 2nd District], and we're laced with our natural resources. We have coal, we have water, we have timber, we have a tremendous amount of natural gas and oil," he said.

And yet, Mullin pointed out, his district is one of the poorest in the country.

"It's underneath our feet as landowners, but ... we can't get to it because of all the red tape it takes to get to products that should be ours," he said.

Mullin said his hostility toward government red tape stems directly from his personal experiences as a company owner and as a rancher on his family farm.

And Mullin reserves a special kind of animosity for U.S. EPA.

As he begins his work on Capitol Hill, Mullin said EPA is an agency with a target on its back.

"A big bull's eye," he said.

"I understand they had a purpose. But it's what they've become. They've become a bureaucracy that is more interested in keeping their self-interests than actually doing what they're supposed to do."

Mullin recalled an incident when federal regulators contacted him with concerns about the 55-gallon diesel storage drums he used on his family farm and wanted him to build a protective berm around his cans.

"I love our land," he said. "You're telling me some guy that's probably never even stepped in cow crap in his life is going to come out here and tell me how to take care of my land?"

Mullin said EPA is running farmers out of business with its regulatory overreach and he wants to begin reining in that overreach one piece of paper at a time.

"Every piece of paper I can take off a desk, I can use that time for production in the field," he said. "That's how we create jobs. We don't create jobs by pushing paper."

Fighting federal regs on technology

Mullin will make his stand against EPA and over-regulation as a member of the House Natural Resources Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Bridenstine will tap into his experience as a Navy F-18 and Hawkeye pilot in Afghanistan and Iraq in his work on the House Armed Services Committee.

Bridenstine has also been given a post on the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

On that panel, the new congressman expects to be well served by his experience working with the private-sector space industry and as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium.

And while the space flight industry is very different from the energy sector, Bridenstine said yesterday that both are affected by some of the same federal regulatory challenges.

"There's a number of organizations out there that are trying to advance human space flight in the private sector apart from the whimsical budgets of politicians," Bridenstine said. "If we can reduce the regulatory burden on them and free them to take the risks required to have the advancements in technology that we need, then that's something I'm going to be supporting."

Rep. Rick Nolan's vision for a mining research center may seem politically infeasible: It would cost $250 million annually to operate at a time when Congress is obsessed with cutting spending.

But the Minnesota Democrat has more of a shot at getting it done than perhaps any of his freshman peers. That's because he enters Congress this year with the seniority of a four-term lawmaker, thanks to his six-year tenure in the House 30 years ago.

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Nolan's experience was a large part of his campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack in Minnesota's 8th District. Cravaack had upset then-Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Jim Oberstar (D) in 2010; Nolan's win, by 9 points, put the northeastern Minnesota district solidly back in Democratic hands.

But the question now becomes: What will Nolan do with his second bite at legislating?

He has so far identified top priorities that are in line with his party -- namely, preserving Medicare and Social Security, ending what he calls "wars of choice," and investing in infrastructure. Nolan has also promised that his first bill will target campaign finance reform, after a congressional race that attracted more than $9 million in outside spending and became one of the most expensive in the nation.

But mining will no doubt also be one of Nolan's central concerns, thanks to his district's location in the Iron Range, with its taconite formations and a rush to mine other on-demand materials.

"I don't apologize for being preoccupied with taconite, timber, tourism," Nolan said in an interview yesterday after being sworn in. "I want to do everything I can to protect jobs in those vital industries in my district."

One of the area's biggest projects has been in the works for almost 10 years, prompting complaints about a lengthy permitting process. Polymet Mining Corp. wants to open Minnesota's first sulfide mine, an open-pit project for extracting copper, nickel and other materials.

While Cravaack blamed permitting and regulations for slow-moving projects, Nolan has focused on the limits of mining research. He envisions a new center in Duluth, Minn., that would research new technology to enable the efficient mining of non-ferrous metals like copper and nickel.

New Rep. Rick Nolan's district includes the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Photo courtesy of Nolan campaign office.

"We're sitting on 4 billion tons of some of the world's most precious metals that are so vitally needed in the advanced technologies of our economy," Nolan said at a debate with Cravaak a couple of weeks before the election. "It just represents a great opportunity for us ... to create jobs and to build opportunities and to build communities in the process."

Calling for the research center may inoculate Nolan from at least some criticism from the environmental community, which is deeply skeptical of a mining boom close to wooded areas and the Great Lakes. It may also bring him closer to the mining industry, which largely favored his opponent in the election (Greenwire, Oct. 10, 2012).

"Nobody cares more about the great outdoors than those of us in the 8th District," said Nolan. "I am convinced that the days when you had to choose between advancing business and industry or the environment, those days are behind us."

Nolan envisions an economy that moves beyond iron, in which northern Minnesota provides the minerals needed for renewable energy. But he argues that the technology needs to be developed -- and that the government should invest in finding more efficient ways of extracting it.

Oberstar, who backed Nolan in the campaign, said the lawmaker's first big challenge will be pushing through the Polymet project, which has been in the environmental review process for eight years. But he also expressed confidence that Nolan could also wrangle $5 million out of Congress to start up the Duluth center.

"He's going to hit the ground running," Oberstar said in a recent interview. "He's not going to be distracted or carried off in too many directions."

A 'clear-eyed' legislator

Nolan's return to the House is most surprising, perhaps, not because of an expensive and hard-fought campaign, but because he voluntarily left Capitol Hill 32 years ago. After winning a seat in 1974 as one of the "Watergate Babies" -- the Democrats elected after President Nixon's resignation -- he walked away after three terms with the opinion that Congress was "impotent."

Nolan spent the next few decades running a sawmill and serving in a variety of positions, including as president of the U.S. Export Corp. Now 69, he believes he has a second chance to enact the kind of changes that seemed impossible to him in the 1970s.

"There are times when people are willing to make big changes," Nolan told Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report in 2011, when he was still mulling a bid.

"We are at a tipping point with wars of choice, the financial future of our entitlements, the federal budget deficit and the decimation of our middle class. This is a time when big changes are needed."

Oberstar described Nolan's current outlook as more realistic than his outlook in his previous tenure. Back in the 1970s, "it proved very, very burdensome. It disrupted families, and Rick experienced that, as well," Oberstar said, referring to Nolan's divorce.

He added, "He really put his life back together and is very clear-eyed about the challenges and how to cope with them, how to get them accommodated, how to balance the legislative process with constituent service needs."

Nolan will be well-positioned -- or as much as a Democrat can be in a Republican-led House -- to push the issues important to his district, with assignments on the Agriculture Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Throughout the campaign, he emphasized the importance of high-speed rail, better roads and a renovated Port of Duluth.

"Building a strong surface and water transportation system creates good paying jobs, improves the quality of our lives, and is the economic backbone of a large district like the Eighth," Nolan said in a statement last week. "Timber, taconite, tourism and manufacturing spread over a large geographic area all require strong transportation to be successful."

During his term, Cravaack worked to roll back the Obama administration's regulatory agenda. For example, he pushed for legislation to prevent U.S. EPA from adopting new air pollution standards affecting taconite facilities.

He also shepherded legislation through the House that swapped state-owned land in a protected wilderness area for federal land that could be opened up for mining and logging leases (E&E Daily, Sept. 13, 2012). Environmental groups opposed the bill.

Nolan has said he wants to find compromise. He also has high hopes of working with Republicans. Nolan told the Associated Press last month that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is a "good man" with whom he will work well.

"I was a very effective legislator in my day, but I always had a Republican partner in anything and everything that I ever accomplished," he said.

During the first meeting of the 113th Congress yesterday, Nolan looked comfortable walking around the House chamber and chatting with colleagues like Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) -- who was elected in 1976, two years after Nolan first arrived. But he conceded that some things have changed.

"Namely, the amount of money that's going to campaign and elections," he said, calling for more transparency and limits on the amount of time politicians spend campaigning and raising money. "We need to change the way we do politics to get this Congress and nation back on track."

"I could not be more thrilled," he said about being back in the House. "I could not be more excited. The challenges could not be greater. I could not feel better prepared. I'm just wildly enthusiastic about the opportunity to serve again."

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) yesterday urged the House to include funding in its Superstorm Sandy relief bill to repair Western watersheds damaged by last year's severe wildfires.

Bennet said the chamber should boost funding for the Agriculture Department's emergency watershed protection program (EWP), which supports projects to restore damage to watersheds and drinking water infrastructure.

Bennet's request comes days after the Senate passed a $60.4 billion Sandy relief bill that included a $125 million boost for EWP. That bill died yesterday when the 112th Congress came to a close, and the House is expected to take a fresh look at the issue beginning today.

This past summer was the most destructive wildfire season in Colorado's history. The High Park blaze near Fort Collins and the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs burned tens of thousands of acres, destroyed nearly 600 homes and at one time displaced tens of thousands of residents. USDA estimated it would cost about $20 million to mitigate watershed damage from the two blazes, Bennet said.

Money in the Senate bill could have been used to repair damaged watersheds in Colorado's El Paso, Larimer and Weld counties, Bennet said in yesterday's statement.

"In the West, we all know how precious water is -- especially right now during the worst drought in years," he said. "That is why the Colorado delegation came together in a bipartisan and bicameral way to fight for these valuable resources at the end of the last Congress."

The cash-strapped EWP program addresses debris-clogged stream channels, unstable stream banks and damaged public infrastructure, as well as damaged upland sites stripped of protective vegetation by fire or drought.

A spokeswoman for Bennet said the program has a balance of about $10 million remaining, but a backlogged need of $116 million for disasters across 19 states. Those projects do not include an estimated $30 million to $40 million in additional need from Sandy, she said. EWP funding is allocated only for emergencies and is not an annually appropriated line item.

In late November, Bennet, along with Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Colorado Reps. Jared Polis (D), Doug Lamborn (R) and Cory Gardner (R), asked appropriators in both chambers to support additional funding for EWP.

Bennet's proposal may be a tall order in the House, where fiscal conservatives have opposed using the Sandy relief bill as a vehicle for pet projects.

The chamber today is expected to take up a limited $9 billion bill for immediate assistance for hurricane flood insurance before moving to a broader $51 billion bill in the coming weeks.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who chaired the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in the last Congress, said watershed repair in Western states is an important issue, but it is not an emergency.

"You can't put a bunch of stuff on an emergency relief bill just because it's a good idea," he said yesterday. "You have to let it go through regular order."

Kingston said that his mother and sister live in Colorado and that he has seen the devastation from wildfires.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations subpanel that funds the Interior Department and whose state also experienced severe wildfires last summer, said he believes the Sandy relief bill should address only areas affected by the storm.

Likewise, Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) said he would be hesitant to include wildfire relief funding in the Sandy bill, unless it appeared that was the only vehicle for it to move forward.

"We've got to be sensible and find pay-fors," Tipton said.

But Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said he would support Bennet's proposal, in addition to supporting putting more money into the Forest Service's budget for wildfire prevention.

"There are tens of millions of acres of diseased, dying forests that need fuel reduction thinning, and the Forest Service doesn't have the budget to do that," he said. "So we wait until the forest catches fire and we spend more than a billion dollars a year fighting fires."

The Senate last month turned down an amendment by Udall and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to the Sandy relief package that would have restored $653 million in funding for the Forest Service's wildfire management fund (E&E Daily, Dec. 19, 2012).

The additional funding would be spent to pre-position ground crews, hot shots and air support in places at risk of severe wildfires, in addition to supporting the purchase of additional large air tankers used as an initial attack against blazes while ground crews get in position. It would also help fund hazardous fuel removal where forests abut communities.

Sen. Thad Cochran yesterday was named the new ranking member on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, a move that could change panel dynamics as work begins anew on the farm bill this year.

The Mississippi Republican replaces Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who has served as ranking member since 2010 and will remain on the committee. Roberts yesterday announced the switch and offered his "full support" to Cochran, who chaired the committee from 2003 to 2005.

"I wish Sen. Cochran the best in his new position and will work with him and his staff to ensure a smooth transition on the committee," Roberts said. "I look forward to working closely with Sen. Cochran in this new Congress to pass a five-year farm bill."

But Cochran's ascension to ranking member could throw a wrench into negotiations over the farm bill, which funds rural conservation and energy programs, commodity subsidies, and food stamps. Cochran voted against the bill written by Roberts and Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last year in committee and again on the Senate floor.

Cochran was among several Southern senators who opposed the measure on grounds that its proposed changes to the commodity subsidy title put rice and peanuts -- two major Southern crops -- at a disadvantage. The Senate farm bill had proposed replacing traditional price supports and direct payments for farm commodities with a new revenue insurance program, a plan backed by Roberts.

With the 112th Congress failing to pass the five-year measure -- the bill was instead partially extended for nine months in the "fiscal cliff" legislation -- work on the farm bill will begin anew in the 113th Congress that was sworn in yesterday.

The composition of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee will largely remain the same in the new Congress. The only differences are two new Democrats, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.), who replace the retiring Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and the loss of a Republican seat previously held by former Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana.

The House Agriculture Committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, predicted yesterday that Cochran's rise to the top of the minority party on the Senate committee will give Southern states more power.

"I think that's a good thing," Peterson said.

On the Senate farm bill's commodity title, Peterson added, "They screwed him. ... I would have voted against it, too, if I had been from Mississippi."

Peterson said Cochran as ranking member would likely result in a final farm bill that looks more like last year's House Agriculture Committee-passed version, which included traditional price supports.

Southern agriculture in general "won big" in the fiscal cliff deal's nine-month extension, Peterson added, because it maintains the current system of price supports and direct payments. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an Agriculture Committee member who also voted against the five-year farm bill last year, negotiated the fiscal deal with the White House.

Stabenow, on the other hand, has aggressively promoted the revenue insurance program included in the Senate farm bill. She said during fiscal cliff negotiations, though, that she may be open to compromise. Her office did not provide a comment on Cochran's assumption of the ranking member position.

In a statement, Cochran said he looked forward to working with Stabenow.

"I will use the experiences I've gained in serving on the committee since 1979 to help quickly advance a new farm bill that will meet the needs of our country's farmers, small businesses and those who rely on the nutrition programs under the committee's jurisdiction," he said in a statement. "I look forward to working with Chairman Stabenow and members of the committee in this new Congress, and I thank Sen. Roberts for his dedicated service as the ranking member during the 112th Congress."

Roberts will assume the position of ranking member on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which was held by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in the 112th Congress.