Upton Picks His Chairs

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman
Fred Upton (R-Mich.) Thursday announced his picks for chairs of subcommittees.

Upton indicated he would enlist those chairs in an
army of budget-cutters. "Every member and every subcommittee will be on
the frontlines as we take on federal agencies -- EPA, HHS, DOE, FCC, you name
it -- to identify wasteful programs and target areas to immediately cut
spending," he said in announcing the new chairs.

Greg Walden (R-Ore.) will head the Communications
Subcommittee, but that cat had already been let out of the bag by Waldenhimself in a tweeted tip-off (in Morse code, no less). Lee Terry of Nebraska will be vice chair.

Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who Upton beat out for the
chairmanship of the committee, was named chairman emeritus, and Sue Myrick
(R-N.C.) vice chair.

Also confirmed was Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) as head
of the Oversight subcommittee, which would take the lead on any investigations
of the FCC, and Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) as head of the Commerce subcommittee.

Upton said he would announce the full makeup of the subcommittees at a
later date. He has pledged vigorous oversight, including of the FCC, which he
has loudly criticized for planning a vote on network neutrality regs for next
week (Dec. 21).

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.