Rep. Jack Brooks, a feisty Texas Democrat, was chairman of the House Committee on Government Operations from 1975 to 1988. Washington bureaucrats testifying before his panel for the first time quickly learned that he didn’t tolerate fools or evasive witnesses. Brooks assembled an infamous group of staff investigators who, according to Hill lore, more closely resembled hungry barracudas than congressional aides. House Republicans would do well to study the Brooks approach if they are serious about getting control of federal spending or challenging President Obama’s frequent use of bureaucratic decrees to initiate policies rejected by Congress and the public. Among the House Republicans who assumed committee chairmanships after the 2010 election, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., have been the most aggressive about asserting congressional oversight authority against the executive branch. And predictably, Obama and his key political appointees have successfully resisted most of those efforts. Upton heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee and thus is in a key position to monitor Obama’s clean energy boondoggles. Upton’s panel has requested documents from the Department of Energy concerning its $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra Corp., a solar energy firm often praised by Obama. The president’s appointees at the Energy Department, as well as at the Office of Management Budget, which evaluated the loan guarantee, have defied a congressional subpoena and refused to turn over documents Congress has an unquestioned right to see.
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