Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,53

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.

Most disturbingly, an Economic and Consumer Policy Committee will presumably allow Cummings to fulfill the Democrats’ wish to expand their limited oversight jurisdiction over the federal government into broad oversight of the entire U.S. economy. This committee in particular will be helpful in targeting (and conceivably destroying) private companies and organizations that do not align with the Democrat agenda. Alternatively, it can be used to back up Financial Services Committee chairman Maxine Waters’s efforts to target deep-pocketed financial institutions whose fines Democrats hope to use for public funding of political campaigns.

Sacred Cows: Protecting Federal Employees

Each new committee chairman brings certain priorities—often those that impact the constituents back home. That’s generally a good thing. In my case, I represented a large geographic area that was rural. The vast majority of land in this country is rural and I felt rural communities were not getting enough attention in the United States Congress. I created the Interior Subcommittee to address issues ranging from rural economies to tribal issues and from grazing to energy. There were many issues I felt were getting glossed over or didn’t neatly fit in other committees.

Likewise, Chairman Cummings will be