[Cross-posted on Congress Matters]
I can't find it right now, but I remember reading something this year where Rep. Wu said that he would be open to switching committees if it were a better fit. I only remember it because it struck me as kind of an odd thing to say. (In retrospect, it would be socially intelligent if you have your eye on a particular committee, but it's powerful or prestigious enough that you'd hurt your chances by seeming presumptuous if you publicly named it too early.) I'm not privy to his thoughts so I don't really know what he meant by that, but that won't stop me from speculating.
Currently, Rep. Wu is on three committees: Education and Labor, Foreign Affairs, and Science and Technology, where he chairs the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation. I'm pretty happy about his membership on Science and Technology (which is a great fit for my Silicon Forest district) and Foreign Affairs.
In fact, he's currently Oregon's only Congresscritter on a foreign relations committee -- though hopefully Sen.-elect Merkley will change that -- and he's even managed to give it a uniquely geeky touch. I have to say, though, it looks to me like his place in Education and Labor could be ably filled by generic_democrat_053.
As important as it is to make college textbooks more affordable, there are other issues of more pressing interest to OR-01. We have a lot of techies who care about preserving net neutrality. We also have a fair number of progressives who care about the kind of things that retiring Rep. Darlene Hooley (OR-05) dealt with on Energy and Commerce, such as Medicare for All and climate change.
I would like to see Rep. Wu take Rep. Hooley's place on Energy and Commerce. One likely difference is that she wasn't even on the Internet and Communications subcommittee, which would seem important to my high-tech district, where I live and work within walking distance of campuses of Yahoo! and Intel. Of course, assuming that Rep. Wu would even be interested in switching to it raises the question, why wasn't he on it yet in that case?
An answer may be in Rep. Hooley's own description of it: "The Energy and Commerce Committee is the oldest standing committee in the U.S. House of Representatives and is generally viewed as one of Congress's most important committees." Even though there are quite a few Representatives with less seniority than Rep. Wu on that committee, it appears unlikely to me that two Representatives from the same party and the same minor state would be able to finagle appointments to it. And, since Rep. Hooley has more seniority than Rep. Wu -- currently at 184 to his 240 -- she would have gotten first dibs.
Unfortunately, that leads to a possible stumbling block, in that there are three other Oregonian Representatives with more seniority than Rep. Wu: Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR-04), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), and Rep. Greg Walden (OR-02). Fortunately, Rep. DeFazio and Rep. Blumenauer have been around long enough that they probably have whatever they want by now; and while Rep. Walden has barely more seniority than Rep. Wu (currently at 238) and might still have a frustrated ambition or two, he's a Republican, so he isn't really in direct competition.