There’s been a lot of talk about Republican plans to subject the Obama administration to strict oversight once the new GOP House majority takes office. Most of the discussion has focused on Rep. Darrell Issa, head of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is the main panel charged with keeping the administration in line. “I’m going to be doing a lot of investigating,” says Issa.
That’s true, but it’s also true that some of the most intense action will be elsewhere. Two key areas on which Republicans plan to keep a close eye are Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ implementation of the new national health care law and Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson’s work to unilaterally regulate carbon emissions. Both fall under the oversight of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — a panel so important that the famed Democratic Rottweiler Rep. Henry Waxman left the Oversight Committee to chair it — and both will be the subject of extensive oversight next year.
It hasn’t been decided who the next chairman of Energy and Commerce will be. Current ranking member Rep. Joe Barton of Texas wants the job, but Hill sources say it is likely to go instead to Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, despite the opposition of conservatives who object to some of Upton’s votes on land use, the EPA budget, and TARP.
“Our oversight role is going to be very active,” says Upton. “I look at the last two years and I think Sebelius has come up one time, same for Lisa Jackson. We’re going to give them a reserved parking place in the Rayburn House Office Building.”
As far as Obamacare is concerned, Sebelius and her staff at HHS are writing far-reaching regulations that will govern state health care exchanges, the amount of money insurers must devote to coverage versus overhead, and which medical procedures are covered by various rules and which are exempt. Right now, the current Democratic Congress is giving Sebelius a free hand. Look for that to change.
It’s not clear whether the administration is prepared for scrutiny. At his postelection news conference, President Obama said he might agree to “tweak and make improvements on the progress that we’ve made” on health care. But he gave no indication that he is willing to rethink any major part of the national health care bill. For her part, Sebelius was asked last month how she would deal with Republican efforts to cripple the health care law. “First, we can win the elections,” she answered. Now, she’ll need another plan.
Then there’s the EPA. In his postelection news conference, Obama declared his preferred vehicle for carbon emissions regulation, a cap-and-trade system, dead for the foreseeable future. Then he was asked: What about the EPA regulating carbon on its own?
“Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat,” the president answered. “It was not the only way. It was a means, not an end. And I’m going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” Translation: The administration will pursue a program to achieve the goals of cap-and-trade without a specific cap-and-trade structure. If Obama does that, he’ll get a fight from the GOP.
Republicans are hampered by a Supreme Court decision allowing the EPA to treat simple carbon dioxide as a deadly pollutant (a decision lawmakers hope to overturn by legislation). But the GOP can pressure the agency on specific policies, and it can also fight proposed agency regulations that deal with ozone levels, the handling of coal ash, and other issues that affect thousands of jobs, as well as energy prices for millions of Americans. “The bottom line, particularly if I am chairman,” says Upton, “is we’re not going to allow them to regulate what they cannot legislate.”
The fight against Obamacare and far-reaching environmental regulations will spread across several committees and involve the entire Republican leadership. In the end, the GOP’s goal is not just to oversee — it is to reverse Obama’s agenda, especially on health care.
Upton compares it to the game Jenga, in which small wooden blocks are stacked in a tower. Players remove blocks from the lower part of the tower and place them on the top, seeing how high they can raise the structure before it collapses from lack of support below. “Ultimately the tower falls,” says Upton. “I’m convinced that if you take the health care law and begin to look at all of the different parts, you can make it fall.”
Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
