{"id":7163,"date":"2014-11-20T02:29:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T02:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7163"},"modified":"2014-11-20T02:29:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T02:29:12","slug":"thornberry-to-head-armed-forces-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7163","title":{"rendered":"Thornberry to head armed forces panel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s official: Mac Thornberry is going to become the next chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re cheering at three key locations in Thornberry&#8217;s sprawling 13th Congressional District in Texas: at the Bell\/Textron and the Pantex operations in Amarillo and at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls.<\/p>\n<p>Thornberry&#8217;s constituency includes those enormously important operations.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the question: Is the veteran Texas Panhandle congressman going to protect these operations from possible budget cuts at the expense of other equally important defense-related projects?<\/p>\n<p>I pose the question because for the two decades Thornberry has served in Congress, he&#8217;s been ensconced comfortably and quietly on the back bench. He hasn&#8217;t made much noise about the work he does on behalf of those projects. He does so quietly and with little fanfare.<\/p>\n<p>Now, though, he assumes a high-profile role as chairman of one the House&#8217;s most visible committees. He&#8217;s become the go-to guy on armed services issues. The pressure is going to be on the congressman to deliver the goods back home while listening with a fair and impartial ear to the needs of his colleagues&#8217; districts elsewhere. There might even be colleagues on his committee who&#8217;ll be sure to push hard for spending in their districts. With limited money &#8212; relatively speaking &#8212; to go around, the House panel is going to have to husband its resources carefully.<\/p>\n<p>How is Chairman Thornberry going to respond to those pressures with the eyes of the nation fixed on how he conducts himself and how he runs this congressional committee?<\/p>\n<p>Good luck, Mr. Chairman.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s official: Mac Thornberry is going to become the next chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. They&#8217;re cheering at three key locations in Thornberry&#8217;s sprawling 13th Congressional District in Texas: at the Bell\/Textron and the Pantex operations in Amarillo and at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls. Thornberry&#8217;s constituency includes those enormously &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7163\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thornberry to head armed forces panel<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12,14],"tags":[582,2170,2183,2849,3489,4253],"class_list":["post-7163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-military-news","category-political-news","tag-belltextron","tag-house-armed-services-committee","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-mac-thornberry","tag-pantex","tag-sheppard-afb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}