House panel claims billions in savings from oversight

Oversight activities by the House Government Reform Committee over the past five years have resulted in more than $6 billion in savings, according to a new report by committee leaders aimed at rebutting charges that it has been lax in monitoring the Bush administration.

The committee has held 256 hearings since the 109th Congress began in January 2005, and has requested Government Accountability Office reports, testimony and briefings 359 times, according to the report. The committee calculated that increased federal revenues and savings totaling $6.4 billion accrued over five years from GAO reports and recommendations it ordered.

The report's conclusions "put the lie to the sweeping generalization that the House has failed to conduct meaningful oversight of the Bush administration," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. "True, it's not the politically charged, inquisitorial, 'Gotcha!' oversight some might prefer. But effective, constructive oversight is much more a matter of due diligence and digging than depositions and sensational disclosures."

Brian McNicoll, a committee spokesman, said Davis' comment responded to campaign trail claims by Democrats that they will conduct more thorough oversight if the party gains control of the House in November. He said the report also satisfies a House requirement that the committee summarize its work before the current session ends in January.

The panel highlighted high-profile hearings held over the past 22 months, including one in which Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Curt Schilling testified on steroid use in baseball, and another in which the committee intervened between Comcast Corp. and the Mid-Atlantic Sport Network to ensure that Washington Nationals games would be broadcast in their home region.

The report also noted the committee's September hearing on Iraq contracting, passage of legislation to improve public access to federal spending data, and Davis' work to push a General Services Administration restructuring that was completed last week.

Previous committees, in their summary reports, have not estimated the dollar value of their work or tracked the number of hearings held and reports requested, making it hard to compare them to the new report. But McNicoll said the current committee has shown a strong return on its $20 million budget.

Steven Katz, who has worked on oversight investigations in both the House and Senate and served as counsel to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee under former Chairman John Glenn, D-Ohio, charged that Davis' committee has neglected important issues, including the war in Iraq, terrorism, the deficit, the environment and energy.

"It appears the committee's most important accomplishments that it mentions were to keep baseball and sports broadcasting safe for Americans," Katz said.

"To the extent that the committee takes credit for investigating and creating millions of dollars of savings for the nation, let's give credit where credit is due: to the [GAO]," he said. "The committee's report of its oversight accomplishments is 97 pages in length … Yet the next 35 pages are a lengthy appendix of GAO's investigations, testimony and reports in small print that constitute the majority of the detailed oversight and savings for which credit is claimed by the committee."

A spokeswoman for the committee's minority staff said they had not been involved in the report's publication. Ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has said he would run the committee on a bipartisan basis if he leads it in the next session of Congress.

Davis has also stressed bridging the aisle. "We don't agree on government contracting, but we have held a lot of hearings together and frankly, I'm a better member and [we produce] a better product because of his participation," he said of Waxman earlier this month.

But Davis defended his performance as committee chair. "Oversight matters because it is a primary constitutional responsibility of the legislative branch to be watchful how the public's money is spent. We have been watchful," he said.