Hardwood Floors December 2018/January 2019

GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

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Election 2018 – Mixed Results for Democrats and Republicans

& Infrastructure Committee. Both Mr. Peterson and Mr. DeFazio are supportive of many Hardwood Federation priority issues, and we will continue to work closely with them and their staff to ensure continued cooperation. Some other chairmen do not have a strong record of supporting Hardwood Federation issues, including those that will be calling the shots at the Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources, andWays and Means. We will need to double down on our efforts to educate and persuade these members, particularly in the areas of biomass energy and combustion, federal forest management reform, and reform of the Endangered Species Act. In the Senate, committee leadership will largely remain the same with the exception of the Senate Finance and Senate Foreign Relations Committees. Both chairmen – Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Bob Corker (R-TN) are retiring. At press time, the final decisions on who will fill these seats had not

While the dust has not quite settled on the 2018 midterm election, the early top line narrative for both political parties is that the night was a mixed bag. Democrats claimed control of the House of Representatives, an outcome that many political operatives had expected, but obviously wasn't a given in this year’s supercharged political environment, and the spotty record over the last few cycles of electoral polling. In the Senate, the upper chamber remains under Republican control. So what does all of this mean?The biggest impact by far will be in the House, where all of the committee chairmanships will be assumed by Democrats at the beginning of the 116th Congress in 2019. In several cases, the new leaders are members we know well and have worked with in the past, including Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) who will chair the House Agriculture Committee and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) who will lead the House Transportation

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