Power Grab by Jason Chaffetz

Author:Jason Chaffetz
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Oversight Without Government Reform

The transformation of congressional oversight from its function as a government watchdog to an anti-Trump opposition research function happened fast. Suddenly the imperative to root out waste, fraud, and abuse became an imperative to root out a sitting president. Democrats are not even trying to make a pretense of pursuing government reform. Instead of addressing government corruption, they are fully focused on politically motivated investigations into the president’s personal and professional life.

During each of the eight years Barack Obama was president, I was a member of the House Oversight Committee. Never once did we attempt to target the president personally. We certainly never went after his family. We never delved into his personal financial records or his or his family’s business dealings, never targeted his legal counsel or spiritual leaders, nor asked them to testify. Not because there were no scandals. But because we were there to identify and solve systemic executive branch problems.

Government abuses were the scandals we targeted. Using the investigative tools of Congress to perform political opposition research on a single individual—even the president—is simply not appropriate. It is an abuse of power that undermines the authority and credibility of the entire legislative oversight process.

Republicans could have easily opened politically motivated investigations. There were calls to look into President Obama’s association with anti-Semitic radicals Louis Farrakhan and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former terrorist Bill Ayers, and other virulently anti-American characters. Some wanted an investigation into a sweetheart mortgage Obama was given by convicted felon and Obama campaign bundler Tony Rezko. Some wanted us to look into the mysterious disappearance of Obama’s college transcripts or even the legitimacy of his birth certificate!

None of these questions have anything to do with the purpose of oversight: crafting legislation and overseeing government expenditures. Such investigations would have been criticized as political stunts, and rightly so. My colleagues and I weren’t willing to misuse the committee resources for that purpose. Nor would our leadership have supported such a ploy. Yet that is exactly how the new batch of Democratic committee chairs have been approaching the awesome responsibility of government oversight.

At a time when the president’s opponents are hyperventilating over whether a nondisclosure payment qualifies as a campaign contribution, far too much of the investigatory apparatus of Congress has been converted to the unofficial opposition research arm of the Democratic National Committee. The Federal Election Commission might want to consider the value of that campaign contribution.

The prerogative to investigate the executive branch does not rest solely with Chairman Elijah Cummings and the House Oversight Committee. Each House and Senate committee has jurisdiction over specific parts of the government and can thus launch limited investigations that involve specific agencies within that committee’s jurisdiction. For Democrats, it’s all hands on deck to target the president of the United States.

Certainly the most high-profile theater of battle between House Democrats and the Trump administration leading up to the 2020 presidential election will be in the committee I once chaired. The committee, now named the

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