On Thursday, Washington’s 6th District Rep. Norm Dicks got the nod to

On Thursday, Washington’s 6th District Rep. Norm Dicks got the nod to be the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Appropriations, which gets a budget of about $1 trillion, or, in Dicks’ world, “lunch money.” But with a new Dem-hating GOP majority in the House and Dicks’ predictions that a spending “bloodbath” is in the works, his position could be the least fun job in Congress. The Seattle Times

reported that Dicks beat out Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania by a vote of 123-64 for his top spot on the ultra-powerful Committee on Appropriations. The Hill

reports that Dicks also wants to keep his spot as chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense, an obvious fit for the Congressman who practically shares a bank account with defense contractors and Boeing. If he keeps that job too, it could set up an interesting dynamic for newly emboldened Republicans who supposedly hate government spending and hate anything Democrats spend on, but can’t say “no” to anything involving the military.Either way, he’ll likely find that writing checks from the bank account was a lot more fun when Democrats owned the bank.Last month, Dicks warned that the new Republican majority in Congress would make for a “bloodbath” of domestic spending, by cutting $100 billion from the $450 billion discretionary budget.But if anyone can stem that bleeding with lumps of cash, it’s Norm “Captain Earmarks” Dicks, who, earlier this year, was not-no-subtly labeled “Mr. Spending” by the Washington Post.