An email from a reader this week raised a question about Hawaii’s Congressional delegation.
In talking with some friends last night, we got to talking about the dynamics of Hawaii’s congressional delegation…
Someone brought up the point that BOTH Gabbard and Takai serve on the Armed Services committee. I don’t think 2 members have ever served on the same committee in the same chamber.
I understand having counterparts in the other House to make sure the look out for Hawaii’s interest no matter which side legislation may be working its way through the process. But with House members limited to the number of committees they serve on, do we really need both our members serving on one committee? Couldn’t they spread their assignments to cover more area and kuleana to issues that affect Hawaii? Why would we waste a key committee assignment when we already have one member from our state serving on armed services.
It’s an interesting question. To be honest, I had never really thought about the overlapping committee assignments until this question was raised here.
Just eyeballing past committee assignments, it looks like the state’s two House members did traditionally tackle different committees, giving the state a broader legislative reach.
Neil Abercrombie was a longtime member of the Armed Services Committee, as were the 1st District representatives who followed, including Charles Djou, Colleen Hanabusa, and now Mark Takai.
But when Gabbard was first elected in 2012, she apparently sought and was given a seat on Armed Services, although Colleen Hanabusa already served on the committee. And when Takai was elected, he also took a seat on the committee, although Gabbard was already there.
Of course, they are also assigned to subcommittees, where the two do not overlap. How much difference does that make? I don’t know.
Any thoughts on this? Is this arrangement best for the voters Gabbard and Takai represent? Share your thoughts.
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Akaka and Inouye both served on Indian Affairs Ctte for years–and never did get their miserable Akaka Bill enacted.
I expect that it is because they are both Hawaii National Guard. What I am wondering is why Hawaii Air Guard is being sent to Middle East?
Followup to JKS: Yes, Inouye and Akaka were both sitting together on the Indian Affairs Committee for the entirety of Akaka’s membership in the Senate. And for some of those years, Inouye was chairman of that committee. Furthermore, Hawaii was the only state that had both of its senators on that Indian Affairs committee from the time it was created until Inouye died — despite the fact that there were no tribes in Hawaii. And at the same time, Abercrombie was on the House Natural Resources committee, which handles all the Indian tribe legislation in the House. This was a tremendous waste of Hawaii’s huge political capital and seniority.
Why did they do it? Pork barrel politics, and a sentimental desire to treat Native Hawaiians as our state race, sort of comparable to our state flower, state bird, etc. Every time a bill came through the Indian Affairs committee to provide broad, general benefits for all federally recognized Indian tribes (education, healthcare, etc.) our Senators inserted the three-word phrase “and Native Hawaiians” even though it’s unconstitutional to give government handouts to a race-based group (You’ve never seen a bill passing Congress to provide housing or healthcare exclusively for African Americans, or Hispanics). That’s how we ended up with what the Akaka bill and the newly proposed rule to create a tribe explicitly mention as 150 federal programs to benefit Native Hawaiians. Protecting those unconstitutional programs is the whole reason why the Akaka bill was introduced in summer 2000 just a couple months after the Rice v. Cayetano decision put the U.S. Supreme Court on record saying that Native Hawaiians are merely a racial group. Our Senators saw that they need to turn this racial group into an Indian tribe to keep the federal megabucks coming to Hawaii; and our business leaders and politicians wanted to protect the “multiplier effect” as those racially-earmarked dollars got spent and the money flowed through the economy. So now greediness for federal megabucks, and a wish to protect the political power enjoyed by large, wealthy race-based institutions, continues driving the push to break apart the State of Hawaii by creating a phony Hawaiian tribe through executive action by the Obama administration.
Perhaps once in a while the extra vote means more military spending in Hawaii?
I wish I had an opinion but like 99 percent of Americans, I have no idea how Congress works.