Gary Peters ... wins a plum Senate assignment

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. ... was named Thursday to the Senate Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful committees in Congress.

Along with its counterpart in the House, the Appropriations Committee oversees the allocation of discretionary spending across the federal government, including defense, transportation and infrastructure priorities as well as awarding funding to agencies for programs and personnel. Billions worth of funding also flow to the states through congressional appropriations bills.

Even when other committees authorize spending on certain items, it typically falls to congressional appropriators to pass legislation saying the funding will be allocated, giving the committee oversight on how federal taxpayer dollars are spent.

According to the Senate Historical Office, former U.S. Sen. Don Riegle, also a Democrat, was the last Michigan senator to serve on Appropriations, having been a member of the committee for about a month in 1977 before being switched to another committee. The last U.S. senator from Michigan to sit for a full Congress on the Appropriations Committee was Republican Charles Potter, who was a member from 1955 to 1959.

Peters, who won his second six-year term in 2020, will continue to sit as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

“I’m honored to join the Appropriations Committee, where I’ll have a platform to advocate for policies and programs that will continue helping make Michigan a great state to live, work and raise a family,” Peters said. He went on to say his priorities on the committee are to strengthen economic competitiveness and domestic supply chains, expand skills training programs and job creation, protect the Great Lakes, and support veterans and the state’s defense facilities among others.

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Peters has also been recognized as one of the most effective and bipartisan senators in the chamber, getting 19 bills he authored over the last two years passed and signed into law, more than any U.S. senator in a single Congress in more than 40 years.