{"id":8818,"date":"2006-10-20T10:20:09","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8818.html"},"modified":"2006-10-20T10:20:09","modified_gmt":"2006-10-20T14:20:09","slug":"there-is-little-if-any-ability-to-do-any-oversight-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/there-is-little-if-any-ability-to-do-any-oversight-now\/","title":{"rendered":"‘There is little if any ability to do any oversight now’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a House GOP classic. In May, we learned that Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, was under investigation<\/a> from federal prosecutors for possible corruption. It’s alleged Lewis used his power, to earmark “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts” for clients of his longtime friend, Bill Lowery, a lobbyist tied to defense contractor Brent Wilkes, best known for bribing Duke Cunningham. It’s serious enough for Lewis to have spent nearly $800,000<\/a> in legal fees to defend himself against the probe.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Justin Rood noted<\/a> a Congressional Quarterly report in which we learn that Lewis has “fired 60 investigators who had worked for his committee rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, effective immediately.”<\/p>\n

Lewis’ decision “has in fact stalled all of the investigations on the staff,” said one of the contractors, a former FBI agent, who asked not to be identified. “This eviscerates the investigatory function. There is little if any ability to do any oversight now.” […]<\/p>\n

“In effect, no investigative function is going to be done,” said the contractor, who called the decision “misguided.”<\/p>\n

“This staff has saved billions and billions of dollars, we’ve turned up malfeasance and misfeasance,” the contractor said. “Its results justify the expense of the staff. I have no idea why the chairman would do this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No idea? None at all?
\n
\nNow, to be fair, I should not that of the five-dozen investigators Lewis fired this week, not all of them were directly involved with investigating him<\/i>. Some of them were hired to root out fraud in a $62 billion federal relief package for Hurricane Katrina rebuilding.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the circumstances look more than a little suspicious. Indeed, in light of the Cunningham\/MZM scandal and other incidents, the entire House Appropriations Committee drew the interest of the FBI<\/a>, which suspected widespread corruption under Lewis’ “leadership.”<\/p>\n

And what does Lewis decide to do? Eliminate most of his investigative staff, bringing the total number of investigators from 76 to 16.<\/p>\n

Committee spokesman John Scofield told<\/a> USA Today, “There is nothing sinister here. It’s about how we do the best oversight.”<\/p>\n

I’m curious, how will the already-suspect House Appropriations Committee do “the best oversight” with fewer people whose job it is to conduct oversight?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a House GOP classic. In May, we learned that Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, was under investigation from federal prosecutors for possible corruption. It’s alleged Lewis used his power, to earmark “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts” for clients of his longtime friend, Bill Lowery, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}