With Republicans maintaining their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, attention turns in the lame duck period to committee assignments and congressional committee chairmanships.

Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Bowling Green Republican fresh off a resounding re-election victory, is in contention to chair the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, which has a powerful role in shaping policy in energy, climate, health care and technology.

The current chair of the committee is retiring from Congress, and Guthrie and Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Latta have both announced their intentions to seek the Energy and Commerce chairmanship in the 2025 session.

Guthrie has chaired the Energy and Commerce’s health subcommittee in the current Congressional session.

A number of published reports have said Guthrie has the support of a number of Republicans to head the committee, while Latta has experience serving on all six subcommittees under Energy and Commerce.

In an interview with the Daily News, Guthrie said he believed Congressional Republicans in the steering committee would select committee chairs for the next Congress in the early part of December.

Guthrie also made his case for heading Energy and Commerce, saying he would support efforts to lift barriers to domestic energy production and reforms to the Environmental Protection Agency permitting process that would enable nuclear production facilities built at the sites of old coal-fired plants to go online more quickly.

“We’re going to make sure that we stop the war on American energy and regain energy independence,” Guthrie said. “This affects everybody at the gas pump and the electric meter, everything that’s made or moved requires energy and the higher cost of energy means the higher cost of cars and groceries … the limit of growth is based on access to energy and because of the regulatory structure it’s very difficult to build new energy sources, we’re not going to have the energy we need to grow our economy.”

Guthrie said that streamlining the permitting process would also be an important step to keep the U.S. competitive with China in the development of 6G, the sixth generation of wireless telecommunications.

The Congressman said a recent visit to Microsoft, where he saw a data center that used as much power as the city of Seattle, was instructive for him.

“It’s important who controls those platforms, and the scary thing is what if China ends up dominating the next generation of telecom because we’re not supplying enough energy to do it? That’s almost like losing the dollar as the world’s currency,” Guthrie said. “Just think about if we start putting Seattles across the country over the next decade without increasing the power grid.”

Guthrie said it would be important for the next Congress to “get a handle on the costs of health care” and supports transparency measures that would show the costs insurers pay for drugs which he said would be a step toward expanding health care options for consumers, and said it was a priority to address the nation’s $36 trillion national debt.

Guthrie also expressed support for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, particularly Howard Lutnick, the head of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald who has been nominated for Secretary of Commerce, transportation secretary nominee Sean Duffy, who served with Guthrie in Congress representing Wisconsin, and Oregon Republican Congresswoman Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, nominated by Trump for labor secretary.