{"id":18767,"date":"2026-02-09T09:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/inside-the-cigar-scif-how-tom-cole-pulled-off-a-house-appropriations-miracle\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T09:47:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:47:16","slug":"inside-the-cigar-scif-how-tom-cole-pulled-off-a-house-appropriations-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/inside-the-cigar-scif-how-tom-cole-pulled-off-a-house-appropriations-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the \u2018Cigar SCIF:’ How Tom Cole pulled off a House appropriations miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The crucial votes to fund the government last week were brokered in Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a>‘s ceremonial office just off the House floor. But the groundwork to get the $1.6 trillion spending package through the chamber was laid in a literal smoke-filled room just steps away.<\/p>\n

That would be the domain of Rep. Tom Cole<\/a>, the 76-year-old cigar-and-whiskey-loving chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Inside that haunt, the Oklahoman took an unabashedly old-school approach over the course of months to getting the congressional funding process unstuck after a record-long, 43-day shutdown last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not actually an office \u2014 it\u2019s a smoke room,\u201d said Rep. Darrell Issa<\/a> (R-Calif.), a regular in what some members cheekily call the \u201cCigar SCIF,\u201d a play on the \u201csensitive compartmented information facilities\u201d where government officials review state secrets.<\/p>\n

Inside, Cole \u201cdoesn’t dazzle you with numbers, he works on people-to-people skills,\u201d Issa said, \u201cand it’s the reason we’ve gotten something done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A\"A<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something of a miracle considering who Cole is and what his colleagues have demanded.<\/p>\n

When Cole took the Appropriations gavel in the spring of 2024, conservative demands for spending reductions were mounting. Hard-liners citing unfulfilled promises of funding cuts had ousted Kevin McCarthy, a close Cole ally, from the speakership just six months earlier. Months later, Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president and immediately began freezing billions of dollars top appropriators had already fastidiously allocated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often joke: Boy, did we get here at a bad time,\u201d Cole said in an interview, describing the situation he and Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins<\/a> (R-Maine) confronted.<\/p>\n

While the politics of government spending grew stormy as 2025 wore on, Cole and his allies were biding their time and working \u2014 puff by puff and sip by sip \u2014 to build support for the government funding bills he was quietly negotiating with his counterparts across the aisle and across the Capitol.<\/p>\n

Matters came to a head in the weeks after the longest shutdown in U.S. history concluded in November. Fiscal conservatives in the House were threatening to block passage of the bills Cole had helped craft \u2014 demanding changes to legislation that had already been settled with Democrats.<\/p>\n

In early January, with tensions high and the chances for another lengthy shutdown rising, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer<\/a> (R-Minn.) entered Cole\u2019s office off the House floor. He emerged more than an hour later and gave Cole his public blessing to proceed with what appropriators had negotiated, a key vote of confidence from the GOP leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bills are being built by the Appropriations Committee in the House and the Senate,\u201d Emmer said. \u201cTom Cole and his colleagues on the Appropriations Committee are doing excellent work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cole<\/p>\n

House hard-liners, who were eyeing massive cuts to member-requested earmarks, didn\u2019t secure any further changes to the funding bills. Now eleven of the 12 annual measures have been signed into law, guaranteeing cash through September for every federal agency except the embattled Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

Along the way Cole has won grudging respect from those same hard-liners, who give him credit for negotiating relatively flat overall funding levels and for trying to return the House to its traditional process of debating the 12 bills individually instead of as a catchall omnibus package.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeavy is the head that wears the crown,\u201d Republican Rep. Scott Perry<\/a> said of Cole in an interview. “Of course he listens. He listens because he has to listen \u2014 we have votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole is \u201ca big reason,\u201d the Pennsylvania conservative continued, that the House is \u201ccrawling out of this hole of just \u2018go along to get along\u2019 in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Space is a great gift\u2019<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n

While Freedom Caucus types like Perry tend not to be denizens of Cole\u2019s tobacco-scented inner sanctum, a wide variety of members are often seen slipping in and out.<\/p>\n

Alongside top Republican appropriators like California Rep. Ken Calvert<\/a> are some GOP lawmakers who don\u2019t sit on the spending panel, among them Reps. Derrick Van Orden<\/a> of Wisconsin, Andrew Garbarino<\/a> of New York and Don Bacon<\/a> of Nebraska. Some Democrats, including California Rep. Jimmy Panetta<\/a>, are known to drop in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve learned more in that room than anywhere else in Congress about how things operate,\u201d said Rep. Mark Alford<\/a>, a second-term GOP congressman from Missouri who coined the \u201cCigar SCIF\u201d moniker. \u201cBut it’s just good to have a place to have honest conversations and develop friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n

A grand photo of Cole\u2019s great aunt, a famous Chickasaw storyteller known as Te Ata, is mounted beside a window overlooking the west front of the Capitol and the National Mall. Most days in winter, a fire burns in a black marble fireplace.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\u201cI think space is a great gift, and I think it’s misused quite often,\u201d Cole said. \u201cThese are grand settings. They’re lovely rooms. They’re obviously immediately adjacent to the floor. You can’t have much better real estate than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engraved on one chair is the name of Rep. Hal Rogers<\/a>, the longest-serving House member and a former Appropriations chair. The 88-year-old Kentucky Republican is often by Cole\u2019s side during House votes and spends hours each week in the room off the floor, which Rogers said wasn\u2019t used as \u201can open forum\u201d until Cole got the gavel.<\/p>\n

When Nebraska GOP Rep. Mike Flood<\/a> \u2014 more than 25 years Cole\u2019s junior \u2014 came to Capitol Hill in 2022, he sought Cole\u2019s guidance on how to get on the Financial Services Committee. He got an invitation to another one of Cole\u2019s smoke-filled offices \u2014 this one upstairs, next to the Rules Committee hearing room where Cole was then serving as chair \u2014 and received an education on Congress from Cole and \u201cfour other guys north of 75.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who don’t avail themselves of that have a much different experience in Congress,\u201d Flood said in an interview, \u201cbecause they’re not learning the Congress as an institution, as a functioning way to make laws and govern Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole likes to be regarded as an institutionalist and a \u201cpractical politician.\u201d He holds a masters degree from Yale and a doctorate from the University of Oklahoma \u2014 both in British history \u2014 and is an avid reader of nonfiction accounts of war and politics. He was a member of the Oklahoma Senate in the 1980s, ran the National Republican Congressional Committee in the 1990s, served as Oklahoma secretary of state and then came to Congress in 2003.<\/p>\n

\"Cole<\/p>\n

\u201cExperience, knowledge, temperament and persistence \u2014 he has it all in spades,\u201d said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart<\/a> (R-Fla.), a senior appropriator and one of Cole\u2019s closest friends. \u201cThe cigar does not hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the House<\/h5>\n

Last March, Cole joined with House GOP leaders to halt bipartisan negotiations with Democrats and instead advanced a six-month funding patch \u2014 an audacious move that spurred Democratic fury<\/a> and fueled the government shutdown this past fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Democrats just didn’t think we could do it,\u201d Cole said. \u201cI think that\u2019s what made the 12 bills possible this year. They know we can do it. They know we will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as Trump directly undermines Congress\u2019 power to steer funding, Cole frequently praises the president in the first lines of any speech or statement celebrating a spending deal. He also was among the Republicans who voted Jan. 6, 2021, against certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, saying in a statement at the time that he did so \u201con behalf of my constituents.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI look on the administration as allies, not as enemies. But I also recognize that they can’t just do what they want to do,\u201d Cole said this year. \u201cAnybody that thinks that Congress has somehow lost its power of the purse \u2014 it has not.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Congress stares down another partial government shutdown over DHS funding, Cole is deferring to the White House in negotiations with Democrats who are demanding changes to the administration\u2019s immigration enforcement tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly the decision is going to be made by the president on this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

Cole also doesn\u2019t meddle in the negotiations of his \u201ccardinals,\u201d the dozen lawmakers who chair his panel\u2019s subcommittees, empowering each of them to resolve differences with Democrats on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis word is gold,\u201d said Rep. Chuck Fleischmann<\/a> (R-Tenn.), one of those chairs. \u201cHe’s infinitely fair, infinitely reasonable. He is so well attuned to working with people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole instead focuses on negotiating overall totals and tricky policy disputes with Congress\u2019 other three top appropriators: Collins, Rep. Rosa DeLauro<\/a> (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patty Murray<\/a> (D-Wash.).<\/p>\n

None of those women smoke cigars, and they prefer to meet in Collins\u2019 less-odorous office on the Senate side. But they all have a close relationship with Cole.<\/p>\n

Murray and Cole go back years: They faced off in negotiations over health, education and labor funding as subcommittee chairs during Paul Ryan\u2019s speakership. Cole described the Washington Democrat as \u201ca candid politician\u201d who is \u201csteely in her resolve\u201d but \u201cwants to get to a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cole said Collins reminds him of his mother, who was the first Native American woman to serve in the Oklahoma Senate. \u201cHer political skills are formidable,\u201d he said, and \u201cshe’s a hard person not to like.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for his Democratic counterpart in the House, Cole calls DeLauro one of his \u201cfavorite people in Congress\u201d and describes her as \u201can Italian grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cole<\/p>\n

The respect is mutual. \u201cYou make a lot of acquaintances in this business, but you have few friends,\u201d DeLauro said in an interview. \u201cTom Cole is my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

That relationship was built not only through years of hard-nosed negotiations but also gentler moments like a 2004 Middle East trip the pair took as part of a bipartisan delegation of appropriators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to drink all the bourbon with you that I can,\u201d she recalled telling him. \u201cOn the other hand, I\u2019m not smoking any cigars.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The crucial votes to fund the government last week were brokered in Speaker Mike Johnson‘s ceremonial office just off the House floor. But the groundwork to get the $1.6 trillion spending package through the chamber was laid in a literal smoke-filled room just steps away. That would be the domain of Rep. Tom Cole, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}