The WikiLeaks debacle, corruption in Afghanistan and Obama administration regulation are all on the agenda as Rep. Darrell Issa prepares to take the helm of the top House committee tasked with watch-dogging Washington.
[…]”We need to start by asking a very fundamental question: Why hasn’t the economy created the private-sector jobs the president promised?” the memo said.
That hearing would call business leaders to testify about how government regulations are doing “harm to job-creation efforts.” The hearing falls in line with what Issa talked about Sunday, when he told “Fox News Sunday” that administration regulation is hurting American competitiveness.
According to the agenda, Issa also plans to hold hearings on the role played by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis. For that, he intends to call the Federal Housing Administration chief to testify, along with non-government experts. Along those lines, Issa is planning a hearing examining the “failure” of another government panel to find out more about the financial crisis — he wants to dig into the work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which he claims has done a “biased” and “highly partisan” job of looking for the root causes of the financial crisis.
Issa also plans to detour into foreign policy. According to the memo, he’ll hold a hearing on how to combat corruption in Afghanistan. He also plans a hearing on WikiLeaks, examining ways the federal government can plug the disclosure of more sensitive information in the future. He plans to call National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to testify.
Issa said on “Fox News Sunday” that Attorney General Eric Holder needs to either do more to crack down on the WikiLeaks document dumps or leave the administration.
Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.
Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO.
Republican staffers say there won’t be any self-destructive witch hunts, but they clearly are relishing the prospect of extracting information from an administration that touts transparency.
And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.
And then the article lists six possible investigations:
Jobgate: Issa has made no secret of his interest in getting to the bottom of muddled, mishandled White House attempts to force Democratic Senate candidates Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff from races in Pennsylvania and Colorado.
Bailoutgate: No investigation poses a more significant political danger to Obama than a no-holds-barred GOP probe into TARP, the AIG bailout, the Freddie-Fannie sinkhole and the administration’s de facto takeover of GM and Chrysler.
Mortgagegate: Sen. Chris Dodd’s embarrassing placement on the company’s VIP mortgage list played a major role in the Connecticut Democrat’s involuntary retirement earlier this year.
Black-Panthergate: Smith, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, has already pressed Holder to look into charges that members of the New Black Panther Party intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.
ACORNgate: A whole host of Republicans — led by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) on the party’s right wing — have demanded an investigation into the defunct community organizing group’s ties to the Obama campaign.
Gulf-Spillgate: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has admitted MMS officials were asleep at the switch in monitoring BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform before it blew up. But Issa is bent on finding out which Obama administration officials were responsible for missing the warning signs and why clean-up and response efforts didn’t take place more quickly.
(Steeples fingers) Mwahahahahahaaaa! I mean – that’s interesting.
WINTERY KNIGHT 