The job Lieberman is failing to do

October 10, 2007

USA Today had a good item yesterday about Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. As the article explained, Waxman wields the gavel very effectively, using the committee’s oversight powers as a successful watchdog should.

Lawyers specializing in congressional inquiries call Waxman substantive and fair.

“He’s dogged. He’s tenacious. He’s got a very large and experienced investigative staff,” said Ray Sheppard, a Republican and former Senate investigator.

Since January, Waxman’s committee has held 29 hearings with a focus on what he calls waste, fraud and abuse. Recurring subjects of scrutiny have been Iraq contracting and the government’s handling of Gulf Coast hurricane rebuilding.

His inquiries tend to make headlines, and they sometimes prompt changes even before Waxman has a chance to grill officials under oath.

What a concept. Waxman has brought a sense of accountability and oversight to a chamber that had given up on its responsibilities.

And then there’s Waxman’s Senate counterpart: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the exact same committee, who apparently doesn’t care about doing his job at all.

It’s the tale of two chairmen, only one of whom is doing his duty.

Subscription-only Roll Call had this depressing report today:

The day news broke that the Iraqi government was revoking the license of Blackwater USA over a questionable Baghdad shootout that killed 17 civilians, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) announced plans for hearings to probe the State Department’s reliance on private security contractors.

On that same day — Sept. 17 — Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) announced two firefighting grants for the towns of Bolton and Willington in his home state.

Though the two committees have similar investigative powers and mandates to uncover waste, fraud and abuse of government funds, Waxman has held eight hearings on Iraq and contracting abuses this year, while Lieberman has held only one on reconstruction challenges in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And though Waxman rarely has missed an opportunity to fire off angry letters to the administration over potential waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct among government contractors, Lieberman — along with his predecessor and current ranking member, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) — has shown relatively little interest in tackling those issues.

And what of all the contracting abuses that Waxman is scrutinizing? Lieberman said he gets “angry when I hear about fraud or corruption in the spending of American dollars,” but it’s not one of his “priorities.”

Even if we put everything else aside, and temporarily overlook Lieberman’s inexplicable position on the war, his triangulation, his right-wing talking points, his politics of fear, and his inability to stick to basic principles he claims to hold dear, his inactivity as chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Affairs is transparently ridiculous.

A year ago, seeking re-election, Lieberman said this committee was his top priority, and he was desperate to return to the Senate so he could wield the gavel. And now that he has the authority he sought, he’s decided not to conduct any real oversight of the administration at all.

He seems to have desperately sought a chairman’s gavel just for the sake of having it — Lieberman wanted power he had no intention of using.

I appreciate the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was in a bind before the 110th Congress began. Rumor has it, Lieberman threatened to caucus with Republicans, creating a 50-50 Senate, if Reid didn’t give him the chairmanship of the committee. Reid felt he had no choice but to acquiesce.

But the consequences matter. Instead of a Senate Committee on Government Affairs that functions as it should, Lieberman just treads water, using his gavel as a flotation device. It’s an embarrassing waste.

If Dems increase their majority by even one seat in 2008, the very first order of business has to be taking that committee away from Lieberman. He’s proven that he doesn’t deserve it.

Big Joe Lie—the perfect decoration for a Halloween party!

  • He’s just doing what his supporters want. His supporters, of course, were a bunch of Republicans in Connecticut. And to think that POS almost got to be VP.

    Jesus.

  • It’s the price Dems pay to control all of the committee chairs. Hopefully, Connecticut voters will realize their folly & replace Holy Joe (Erzatz Warrior) when his term is done.
    That will be easier if the Dems pick up a true majority in the next cycle, and this putz can be stripped of any authority.

  • With the “new rules” of the Senate — 60 votes to pass anything (roll eyes), I fail to see what difference Lieberman makes. The 50-50 tie is essentially moot, especially in light of Liberman’s neocon voting predilections.

    Reid should kick him to the curb. Let Smokey Joe pout all he wants, he’s of no use to the Dems anyway.

  • Isn’t the obvious conclusion that he wanted this committee *precisely* for the purpose of NOT doing the investigations it should be doing?

    I agree, the first order after we increase the majority in 2008 is to disassociate themselves entirely from Joe Lie. (I’d actually prefer someone landed a house on him, but it will be pleasurable to make him serve 4 more years with no power and no platform.

  • I think it’s pretty simple…while he was targeting his desperate-to-win-so-he-could-wield-the-gavel message to Dems who – mistakenly – thought he wanted it to do the kind of oversight Waxman is now doing, the truth is that he seems to have wanted it to protect the administration from the kind of investogation and oversight that Waxman is doing.

    Appears that in addition to fooling Connecticut voters, he also scammed Harry Reid pretty good, because without Harry’s blessing, the Connecticut-for-Lieberman Party member was not really entitled to seniority or choice committee chairmanships.

    I would be curious to know what the other Democratic committee members think of their seats on the now-useless Senate committee.

  • This is actually a backtrack for Leiberman. The fact that he says he’s angry but it’s not a priority is a marked change from his unwavering, undonditional support of Bush regarding the war. It means he thinks his head-in-the-sand strategy could hurt him.

  • I wish we could ignore Lieberman, Haik, but he’s the poster boy for The Lobby, and they’re trying hard to drag us into an even bigger quagmire than we’re already in.

    To wit:

    By declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization, the U.S. Senate has further fortified the fact that the Bush Administration does not have to seek additional congressional approval to launch a military strike in Iran because the White House already has authorization to use military force against terrorist organizations. No doubt, the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment has significant foreign policy implications for the Middle East, yet AIPAC, the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, claims that it didn’t draft the amendment, didn’t have input or influence on the content of the amendment, and cannot say for certain whether any of its members lobbied in favor of the amendment. ”

    http://teamliberty.net/id521.html

    This is really important. Joe Lieberman and his buddies in The Lobby are trying to fuck us all over for the forseeable future so that a bunch of religious radicals in Israel don’t have to give back stolen land.

  • yeah, if only he had a platform to address the corruption and waste that makes him so angry . . .

  • and jones, your simple-minded reductionism isn’t helping anyone — in this case it’s mostly american members of the MIC that holy joe is standing up for (if you consider blackwater or KBR american)

  • Once the Dems get a larger majority after the next election, Harry Reid should boot LIE-berman from the caucus. He should then turn the gavel of the committee over to Sen.Byron Dorgan (ND), who has, as Chair of the Democratic Policy Committee (through the Oversight and Accountability Project), been investigating and conducting hearings on waste, fraud and abuse the past few years. Sen. Dorgan and Henry Waxman have already worked together on the subject so there shouldn’t be much transition time needed.

    See http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/ for more information.

  • Hannah, I have a better idea…once the Dems get a larger majority, they turn over the gavel of Majority Leader to someone other than Harry Reid…

  • Jerusalem Joe has got to go. He has no business in government service at all. He’s an embarrassment to all of us and does nothing of value to anyone except Israel. He’s in the wrong country. I hope his committee record is made available to his constituents…if he has any left. He’s another bought and paid for Washington insider who has hung on to his elected position by the skin of his…nevermind. Jerusalem Joe has got to go.

  • Did anyone really expect anything different from Jerusalem Joe?

    I just wonder what the Democrats were getting when the helped place Jerusalem Joe on the committee?

  • I just wonder what the Democrats were getting when the helped place Jerusalem Joe on the committee?

    Control of the Senate. Which is a bit more important than a committee that is superfluous. It means we get to decide which of the fence bills go up for a vote or not.

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