Mark Pryor Leading Reform Effort In U.s. Senate

Junior Democrats in the U.S. Senate, led by none other than Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, are attempting to recraft seniority assignments in an effort to accelerate legislative activity in Congress.

Pryor is a focal point in a Huffington Post article about efforts to reform access on "Super-A" committees, the most powerful panels in the Senate.

Super-A committees – which include Appropriations, Finance, Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Commerce – are highly coveted seats. However, they are dominated by senior leaders of the Senate who are spread too thin to attend all meetings, therefore leading to much stalled legislation in Washington.

Pryor has been part of a younger leadership group looking to change the Senate rules to improve working relations in the upper chamber.

The junior-member effort was led by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who was elected in 2002. "Part of this [effort] was to make this Senate run more efficiently and maybe get us to be on fewer committees so we could focus more on fewer committees," Pryor told HuffPost, adding that he himself is on six committees and is spread too thin.

"But another part was that we wanted to make sure that our younger, newer members had a chance to plug in and be active and be involved, and, I’d say, live up to their potential," said Pryor, who sits on both Commerce and Appropriations. "So, it was something that was a good exercise, and certainly, I think, we made some progress on all fronts."

Pryor made a closed-door presentation to the caucus, he said, laying out the fact that many members were on more than one committee and that many committees had more than the maximum number of people allowable. One difficulty, he said, is that a solution to one of those problems only exacerbates the other. Reducing the size of the panels makes it harder for newer members to gain entry.

You can access the full article at this link.