Republican Alabama U.S. Senator Katie Britt will follow her former boss, Richard Shelby, on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The outgoing lawmaker was vice-chair on the powerful committee that helps set the federal budget. Britt will serve as a freshman.
The newly elected Senator will also work on the Senate Committees on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, as well as and Rules and Administration. The full Senate is expected to approve an organizing resolution on how the upper chamber conducts business. There was speculation on whether Britt would be able to continue Shelby’s level of federal funding for Alabama.
The retiring Senator finished his time in Congress working to put billions of dollars for Alabama in that chamber’s omnibus spending package. The veteran Republican, and vice-chair of the appropriations committee helped to shape the federal budget. Shelby worked to include items in the Senate funding bill that would benefit Alabama. The list includes such as $1.4 billion for Fort Rucker, $170 million for Javelin missiles built in the state, $2.6 billion for NASA’s Artemis rocket built and managed in Huntsville, and $26 million for construction at Tuscaloosa National Airport.
The Senate passed the massive $1.7 trillion spending bill that finances federal agencies through September and provides another significant round of military and economic aid to Ukraine one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress. The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5 billion for domestic programs and $858 billion for defense and would finance federal agencies through the fiscal year at the end of September.
President Biden signed the final version of the bill last month.
