Women serve in top appropriations positions for first time in congressional history
Misty Severi
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Four women on Capitol Hill will make history this year after being appointed to the four top positions on the House and Senate Appropriations committees, marking a first for women in Congress.
The high-profile committees will be overseen by Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in the Senate and Reps. Kay Granger (R-TX) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) in the House. Murray and Granger are the respective chairwomen, while Collins and DeLauro serve as the ranking members.
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“You are looking at the table with the four women,” DeLauro told NBC News. “Oftentimes people say, you know, ‘We need to have women at the table.’ Well, women are the table.”
The women will largely lead the conversations on government spending while working with their respective chambers to avoid a possible government shutdown and avoid defaulting on the country’s debt. Granger, who became the first female Republican to lead the House committee last week, said she believes the path forward is difficult but possible.
“It’s really a difficult time. We can make it through. But I’m absolutely convinced that we have to stand together,” Granger said.
All four women have spent decades on the Hill, with Collins and Murray both joining the Senate in the 1990s. When Collins was first elected, she was ranked No. 99 out of 100 in terms of seniority but has since risen to be No. 8. Murray is now third in line to the presidency after becoming the first female president pro tempore of the Senate earlier this month.
“We had to prove ourselves in every single room that we were just as capable, which is why maybe we’re better legislators,” Murray said, explaining that women are good communicators. “We speak English: We talk about child care, we talk about making sure that our food supply is safe in this country, we talk about making sure that you have a road that you can drive on to pick up your kids at school that’s safe.”
Murray added that women were often in a rush to get home and take care of their families in a way that their male counterparts were not.
“I certainly think men can make the argument. But that’s not their heart, that’s not what they fight for,” Murray said. “I also think women tend to come to Congress to get things done. They don’t want to wait for the next legislative session. We want to finish things and get home and take care of our families. So I think we work well together. We listen to each other. Do we differ on major policies? Absolutely. But I think we overall want to find solutions to problems — not just have problems that we campaign on.”
Other key positions for women in the House are Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) helming the Energy and Commerce Committee and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) leading the Education and the Workforce Committee. The Republican Party took back the House during the midterm elections last November and elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House speaker.
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Shalanda Young has also made history as the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the Biden administration. She is the first black woman to serve as the White House’s top budget official.