To the winners (read Dems) go the spoils

This from Roll Call:

The day after Election Day, lobbyist Chuck Brain, a former aide to presumptive House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), passed through the hallway outside the committee’s Republican offices. Brain observed huge trash bins outside the tax-writing panel’s GOP suite and watched as staffers chucked old papers, making way for the Democratic aides who will assume the space in the Longworth House Office Building.

It had been only hours since election results showed that control of the House had flipped to the Democrats. And the tallies showed that voters had been particularly unkind to Republicans on Ways and Means.

At least six Members who lost their races last week served on the panel — and some of them were among the committee’s most powerful. They include the current second-ranking Republican, Rep. Clay Shaw (Fla.), who chairs the subcommittee on trade, and the No. 3 Republican, Rep. Nancy Johnson (Conn.), chairwoman of the subcommittee on health.

Also wiped out on Election Day were several less senior Republicans — Reps. Jim Nussle (Iowa), J.D. Hayworth (Ariz.), Melissa Hart (Pa.) and Chris Chocola (Ind.). And that doesn’t include the earlier resignation of disgraced ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who abruptly left amid a scandal; Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.), who is stepping down from Congress after an unsuccessful bid for governor; and, of course, the retirement of the panel’s powerful and cantankerous chairman, Bill Thomas (R-Calif.).

No other committee seems poised for as dramatic a transformation in the 110th Congress. These changes weigh heavily on the minds of business interests in Washington, D.C., since Ways and Means arguably has no peer in its impact on the bottom line of American business.