To the extent congressional investigations can expose what happens in darkness, they serve as one of the few disincentives to abuse power in the executive branch. As I’ve often said, absent market forces to constrain behavior, the federal bureaucracy needs the threat of public exposure to keep it in line. The fact that the exposure may be motivated by political considerations makes the tool no less potent.
Legitimate oversight is nothing to be feared. If someone inside the Trump administration has legitimately broken the law, compromised national security, or abused their power, they should be held accountable like anybody else. I think President Trump would agree. It was my experience that President Obama did not. Nevertheless, rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse should be a priority in any administration. Oversight is not overreach simply because the target of an investigation shares our political views.
I had the opportunity to work with Chairman Elijah Cummings while he served as the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member. Despite some of our public disputes during hearings, we made a serious effort to work collaboratively on many investigations. We developed a mutual respect and a friendship that would probably surprise people. Together we pursued dozens of bipartisan investigations that often drew little media coverage, but ultimately helped hold people accountable.
I’m proud of the work we did on prescription drugs, Freedom of Information Act reforms, legislation to empower inspector generals, uncovering misconduct and improving security with the Secret Service, exposure of wrongdoing at the Drug Enforcement Administration, and efforts to uncover the truth of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. We were able to work together to root out some of the incompetence that can inevitably be found in large bureaucracies and to be a catalyst for effective reforms. This is oversight as it is meant to be conducted. Now that Cummings holds the chairmanship, I would like nothing better than to see him continue that bipartisan tradition of working together to root out the problems within the federal bureaucracy.
Policy Replaced with Politics
Unfortunately, I think Speaker Pelosi believes the tools Chairman Cummings now controls are far too valuable politically to waste on government accountability or problem solving. These are not her priorities. They don’t excite the base to donate to political campaigns and nonprofits. They do not generate invitations to Sunday news shows or get members featured in viral media clips. Instead, she wants the oversight tools for her war on Donald Trump.
Make no mistake. The transformation taking place right now is not merely a change of partisan control. What is coming is a fundamental transformation of the oversight role. The Oversight, Judiciary, and Intelligence committees’ investigative powers are becoming primarily a political weapon. Pelosi sees them as a tool to build narratives. She has little care whether those narratives are true or false, only that they move the needle in the next election.
Don’t expect to see much energy being devoted to bipartisan efforts to clean up government in the run-up to a high-stakes presidential race. Those types of efforts may well become another casualty in this political war for dominance. While Cummings is very capable of providing substantive and effective oversight, he is also a loyal soldier for Speaker Pelosi and unfortunately seems to concur with her inclination to convert oversight resources to weapons on the political battlefield.
The renaming of the committee to remove the word government was the first signal that the 116th Congress will have little interest in traditional investigations of waste, fraud, and abuse in executive branch agencies. The decision also signals a metamorphosis of congressional committees to extend their oversight jurisdiction beyond mere government entities and into the furthest reaches of the American economy. Targeting individuals and private sector entities is an abuse of the committee’s power. But it’s already happening.
In fact, when Chairman Cummings was interviewed by 60 Minutes just after taking the chairmanship, he indicated a belief that his committee could investigate anything, without limit and without regard to whether the subject of the investigation is government related at all.
Coincidentally, this threat to dramatically expand the committee’s scope brings some financial perks to the campaigns of committee members.
The House Oversight Committee is considered a “C” committee, meaning seats on the committee are not as difficult to get as the more choice “A” and “B” committees. “A” committees are designated as such primarily because of the ability of committee members to fund-raise off those with business before the committee. Freshman members seldom get “A” committee assignments—those are generally reserved for more senior members. When members are competing for spots and ranking their choices, Oversight has not traditionally been very competitive. Everyone wants a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, which regulates spending, the Financial Services Committee, which regulates banks and Wall Street, or the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which regulates the tax code. These “A” committees have the power to tax, spend, and regulate some of the deepest pockets in America, so their members are an important target for donors and lobbyists.
Traditionally, the House Oversight Committee has not been a threat to many private entities. It only engages with government entities, and its legislative jurisdiction primarily covers federal operations. With Cummings repositioning the committee to exercise jurisdiction over the entire American economy, K Street lobbyists will show a lot more interest. Members on the committee will find campaign contributions much easier to solicit. Perhaps more senior members will seek seats on the committee. We can expect to see government oversight and legislative reform take a backseat to campaign-driven priorities.
The only government waste, fraud, or abuse we can expect Democrats to pursue will be that which can be pinned to the Trump administration and its appointees. They will use every tool they once derided, taking each a step further, confident in the belief that the public will have forgotten their previously held positions and trusting that their media allies will remain silent.
Subcommittees Get Woke
Every committee chairman gets to exercise the prerogative to restructure the committee when taking over the gavel. When I took the Oversight chairmanship, I created two entirely new subcommittees—the Information Technology Subcommittee and the Subcommittee on the Interior. Likewise, Chairman Cummings gets to create a committee structure that reflects his priorities. Although the act of reorganizing subcommittees is nothing to fear, the changes Cummings made signal the committee’s coming metamorphosis.
Both of the new subcommittees I created in 2015 were eliminated by Democrats. They do not make very good weapons for 2020. Instead, Chairman Cummings replaced them with his own new subcommittees that are better suited for political warfare. The Committee on the Environment will help him promote the Democratic priority to use climate change as a pretext to grow government—a very useful tool on the political battlefield, but hardly one that lends itself to the committee’s core mission of rooting out government waste, fraud, or abuse.
The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Committee will be useful in producing fodder for Democratic identity politics in the 2020 political campaigns. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that Pelosi has assigned many of her best icons of identity politics to Cummings’s committee, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. This committee will also be primed to promote the voter suppression narratives upon which Democrats depend to fend off election security measures. I know from experience that Democrats on the committee firmly believe that election security is used as a pretext by racists to keep black and Hispanic people from voting. Don’t expect to see Democrats looking to secure elections, even in the face of Robert Mueller’s documented conclusion of Russian interference. For Democrats, identity politics and voter suppression narratives will trump election security every day of the week.