WASHINGTON — As the 118th Congress comes to an end, lawmakers are busy setting the stage for 2025. The Utah congressional delegation will also see some changes in the new year.
In the upcoming session, Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, will serve on the House Appropriations Committee alongside Republican Reps. Nick LaLota, of New York, Mark Alford, of Missouri, Dale Strong, of Alabama, and Riley Moore, of West Virginia.
Overseeing the control of federal spending, this panel is one of the most influential in Congress. Because these lawmakers hold the purse strings, they often lead out during negotiations.
“Being selected for the House Appropriations Committee is a huge honor and opportunity for me. I want to thank the Steering Committee for giving me this chance,” said Maloy in a press release. “I am eager to work with my colleagues on passing a fiscally sound and responsible budget. Serving on Appropriations will give me the chance to deliver on Utahns’ priorities.”
She brings to the table her experience as the chief legal counsel for former Rep. Chris Stewart, who also served on the Appropriations Committee. Stewart also endorsed Maloy to fill his seat in the special election in 2023.
It’s relatively common for congressional lawmakers to receive only one committee assignment if they are on a major or highly sought-after committee, such as the Appropriations Committee, that requires a bigger time commitment. But it’s possible Maloy, who represents Utah’s 2nd District, gets on another panel in the coming days.
She was previously on the House Education and Workforce and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the same as Rep. Burgess Owens, who will retain his committee assignments.
Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th District, had hoped to win the position of top Republican on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, but that position was claimed by Rep. Tim Walberg, of Michigan.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., has held the position since 2017, past the six-year term limit for committee chairs. Foxx, who won reelection this year, has advocated for school choice and alternative paths to traditional four-year colleges.
Walberg, a former steelworker, previously campaigned for the chairmanship but lost to Foxx. In his interview with Politico earlier in February, Walberg differentiated himself from Foxx and said he would focus on boosting employment opportunities.
“I’ve always felt that education is primarily for one purpose: to get people prepared for a job,” he said. “If we don’t have a good workforce, we don’t have a strong country.”
Rep. Blake Moore, the vice chairman of the Republican Conference who represents Utah’s 1st District, will remain on the House Ways and Means and Budget Committees. He previously told the Deseret News he looks forward to staying on those committees.
“This is the moment that we’ve kind of been waiting for,” Moore said, on Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and the presidency. His committee will take on taxes as many provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire.
Aside from shaping tax policy, the Ways and Means panel also oversees Social Security and Medicare and can usher in budget reform — another pressing issue as U.S. federal debt crosses $36 trillion.
The newest member of Utah’s delegation is Rep.-elect Mike Kennedy. He replaces Sen.-elect John Curtis in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. His committee assignments haven’t yet been revealed, but he has talked about prioritizing health care reform on the federal level, as he did while serving as a state senator.
He focused on bills that address licensure reform, the state Medicaid budget and transgender treatments for minors.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
