Tom Cole elect­ed House Appro­pri­a­tions chair­man to suc­ceed Kay Granger

House Rules Com­mit­tee Chair­man Tom Cole (R‑OK) will take on a pow­er­ful role as the next chair­man of the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee after the GOP Steer­ing Com­mit­tee elect­ed him to the posi­tion on Tues­day night.
The Okla­homa con­gress­man will suc­ceed out­go­ing Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee Chair­woman Kay Granger (R‑TX), who announced that she was step­ping down from her lead­er­ship posi­tion fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the fis­cal 2024 appro­pri­a­tions bills.
Cole will inher­it a dif­fi­cult task of work­ing to pass the next batch of appro­pri­a­tions bills for 2025, after com­plet­ing the 12 appro­pri­a­tions bills for 2024 proved to be a dif­fi­cult task for House Repub­li­cans.
The Okla­homa Repub­li­can had pushed back against calls from fel­low Repub­li­can Rep. Robert Ader­holt (R‑AL) who want­ed to delay the selec­tion of the next chair­man, say­ing it was time to “remove the uncer­tain­ty.”
Ader­holt had sparked rumors that he might seek to chal­lenge Cole for the chair­man­ship over the last few …