Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS), 80, is resigning April 1. House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) is retiring at the end of this congressional session. Both “are set up for a bountiful swan song” as they look to secure money for their home-state priorities in this omnibus funding bill, Roll Call reports.
For Cochran, that includes “a massive and controversial Mississippi River flood control plant that was killed off a decade ago by President George W. Bush’s EPA, and money to keep Pascagoula shipyards in the hunt for a contract worth up to $3 billion to build the first new polar icebreakers in four decades,” Roll Call’s Kellie Mejdrich writes.
For Frelinghuysen, it means trying to ensure some $900 million is included for the $30 billion Gateway Program of rail and other infrastructure projects vital to New York, New Jersey and the Northeast corridor as well as a $354 million increase for Superfund cleanup sites and $300 million more for NIH cancer research, part of which would flow to New Jersey’s Rutgers Cancer Institute.