Posted on 03/30/2009 5:53:26 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The House will vote this week to give its main investigative arm one of the smallest funding increases of any committee — a sign that oversight of a Democratic administration isn’t a leading priority for the Democratic Congress.
The Oversight Committee, where Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) has pledged to bird-dog the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the $787 billion economic stimulus plan, is getting a 3 percent increase, the second-smallest boost of any committee.
Overall this year, committees got a 9 percent increase, with the Small Business Committee getting the largest percentage increase, 21 percent.
Oversight remains the second-highest-funded committee overall, but only the Budget Committee got a smaller increase, and it got what it requested.
The Energy and Commerce Committee, where former Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is now chairman, got a 12 percent increase, the fourth-highest. Waxman’s $2.5 million boost is the largest of any committee in raw dollars.
The Budget Committee asked for and received a 1.4 percent increase. Three other committees — Intelligence, Rules and the global warming committee — also got the increases they asked for.
The Oversight panel had requested an 11 percent increase, or $1.6 million. In the House Administration Committee, that was slashed to $740,000.
Last Congress, Oversight got a 5.4 percent increase; in the 109th Congress, it got a 4.5 percent increase. During the Bush administration, the committee, under powerful Chairman Waxman, used its power to scrutinize the White House in detail and subpoena several administration officials.
But with Waxman heading a new committee, the 111th Congress’s version of Oversight has taken a much quiet role.
Its spending is frozen at last year’s levels for the rest of the fiscal year. And committee sources said that after Waxman took staff with him to Energy and Commerce, they stayed on Oversight’s payroll while Waxman sorted out staffing with ousted Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.).
Republicans say Oversight’s relatively paltry increase shows that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) isn’t living up to President Obama’s pledge of “unprecedented” accountability.
“You would think that the Speaker would have a vested interest in protecting against potential waste, fraud and abuse, yet she seems intent on undermining the oversight process,” said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the Republicans on the Oversight panel.
But Pelosi aides reject the criticism, stressing that Oversight still gets the second-most money out of all the committees and noting that Pelosi has ordered other committees to start doing their own oversight.
“The committee funding resolution reflects our commitment to legislation to promote the economic recovery and energy independence, rigorous oversight regardless of who is in the White House and spending restraint in the budget for Congress,” said Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.
Kyle Anderson, spokesman for the House Administration Committee, said Oversight had returned $700,000 that went unused last year even after Waxman’s aggressive investigation of the Bush administration and the Wall Street meltdown. Still, he said, the committee spending called for “difficult decisions.”
“The current economic climate calls for a stronger emphasis on fiscal stewardship, and that is reflected in these funding levels,” Anderson said.
Elshami said it was Republicans who “famously abandoned oversight for six years of the Bush presidency.”
But the question of whether Democrats would use the same kid gloves on Obama that Republicans did on then-President George W. Bush popped up literally as soon as Obama was elected.
The morning after the election, Waxman launched his campaign to oust Energy and Commerce Chairman Dingell. Waxman had played bad cop to the Bush administration for two years, scrutinizing contracting in Iraq, White House e-mails and numerous other allegations and scandals. Towns was next in line, and he was not viewed as being as aggressive as Waxman, or some other senior members of the panel.
Towns himself has acknowledged that questions loom over how aggressive he will be. Earlier this year he gave a speech that his staff billed as a chance to “dispel the myth that he will not pursue an aggressive agenda.”
In that speech, he pledged to stay on top of breaking scandals. He also said he would be watching how the $700 billion from the Wall Street bailout is handled.
During the recent flap about bonuses at bailed-out insurer AIG, Towns appeared to relinquish the jurisdiction over Wall Street that Waxman had asserted in a series of high-profile investigative hearings last year. The House Financial Services Committee summoned AIG chief Edward Liddy to testify on the bonuses, then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke.
As the scandal died down on Capitol Hill, Towns scheduled a hearing with former AIG President Maurice “Hank” Greenberg.
The overall spending on committees has been billed as a modest 5 percent increase, in line with the District of Columbia cost-of-living adjustment. The 5 percent figure compares the current fiscal year with the next fiscal year rather than comparing the current 111th Congress to the previous 110th.
Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.), the top Republican on the panel, had insisted that the chairman or ranking member of each committee report back to the Administration Committee before getting its funding for the second year of the session.
“The unprecedented level of government spending reflected in the president’s budget proposal will demand increased congressional scrutiny, which is what we applied in respect to funding for House committees,” said Lundgren, who voted for the funding resolution. “I believe this modest increase in committee funding will provide sufficient resources for House committees to conduct proper oversight.”
Harry? Nancy?
Fix this!
You promised!
Oh what a web we weave..
Oversight in this brave, new Government of Transparency...
[/sarc][/cynic]
She really said this??
Foxes... henhouses...:^)
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