House Armed Services Committee

What's in a name? Tradition. This year, the 1994 Republican coinage "House National Security Committee" was changed back to the old "House Armed Services Committee"—a name that had for years connoted power and authority. The shift is appropriate for a committee that went through fewer dislocations than other committees during the GOP takeover, and that still has a reputation for bipartisanship. Indeed, four years after the great upheaval, the staffers pride themselves on how much they have retained from an earlier era, when staffers put professionalism before party to get an authorization bill out every year. That bill—covering half of federal discretionary spending—still comes out under the aegis of a staff that is unified both in theory and (largely) in practice: A single budget pays the salaries of both the Republican and Democratic staffers, who are responsible to members of both parties; and the subcommittees are staffed not by their own chairmen's hires, but by employees of the full committee.
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