A powerful Congressional committee charged with overseeing the Pentagon’s vast $700 billion annual budget is now stacked with female military veterans, after the landmark 2018 elections brought a wave of women to Congress.
A powerful Congressional committee charged with overseeing the Pentagon’s vast $700 billion annual budget is now stacked with female military veterans, after the landmark 2018 elections brought a wave of women to Congress.
The House Armed Services Committee named 16 new Democratic members, according to a Jan. 15 email from committee chair Adam Smith of Washington state. Ten are women, and three of those are military vets who are new to Congress: Chrissy Houlahan is a third-generation veteran who served in the Air Force; Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot; and Elaine Luria had a 20-year career in the Navy as a nuclear engineer. They join Tulsi Gabbard, an Army veteran and Democrat from Hawaii. Republicans have not yet declared their Armed Services Committee members.
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The overall number of women is believed to be a record for the House committee, which was started in 1947 and has never had a female chair. Patricia Schroeder, a Democrat from Colorado, became its first female member in 1973; the chairman at the time made her literally share a chair with another member of the committee during an organizational meeting to make her uncomfortable, she recalled to a biographer.
The US military industrial complex is increasingly run by women, as Politico reported this month; they are the top executives at defense contractors and some of the top military officials designing and purchasing the US’s massive military arsenal.
Being in the military was a common path to Congress in decades past, and nearly three-quarters of members elected in the years after the Vietnam War had served, the Military Times notes; now less than 20% of Congress has. However, the 2018 elections brought 19 brand new military veterans to office from both sides of the aisle. The US Congress overall now has seven female veterans, a record.
