Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Conservatives who will soon hold sway on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform are setting the stage for what will likely be a lengthy fight over how billions of American taxpayer dollars were spent in response to COVID-19.
Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the Republican tabbed to chair the committee when it shifts to Republican control in the new year, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press over the weekend and announced his plans to undertake several dozen investigations into numerous Biden Administration programs.
Chief among the pending probes, Comer said, will be an assessment of where and how COVID money was spent.
“We believe that there have been hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars wasted over the past three years, so that spans two administrations, in the name of COVID,” Comer said. “We want to have hearings on that. We want to try to determine what happened with the fraudulent unemployment insurance funds, the fraudulent PPP loan funds, some of this money that’s being spent for state and local governments in the COVID stimulus money.”
It’s hardly a surprise that Comer, who was chief among House Republicans who promised to investigate the Biden family’s business dealings and has called upon Twitter owner Elon Musk to reveal the extent to which Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, would make such an announcement.
Comer has been vocal about his desire to refocus the Oversight Committee on preventing government waste.
“Americans have lost faith in congressional oversight,” Comer tweeted, in part, on Tuesday. “I intend to restore the Oversight Committee to its intended mission.@GOPoversight will work to root out any waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.”
Americans have lost faith in congressional oversight.
I intend to restore the Oversight Committee to its intended mission. @GOPoversight will work to root out any waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.
Joined @jaketapper @CNN to discuss some of my priorities👇 pic.twitter.com/leOYC7Sj0u
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) November 29, 2022
And it appears Comer plans to cast a wide net.
“[We’re] going to investigate between 40 and 50 different things,” Comer told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. “We have the capacity. We’ll have 25 members on the committee, and we’re going to have a staff close to 70. So we have the ability to investigate a lot of things.”
During his visit to Meet the Press, Comer also chided Democrats for having, he said, failed to hold the Biden administration up to scrutiny.
“[Over] the past two years the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee haven’t investigated anything in this administration,” Comer said. “They’ve investigated the Washington Commanders football team, we’ve had several hearings on social issues that the Oversight Committee has absolutely nothing to do with, issues like abortion.”
As of this writing, Democrats on the Oversight Committee have not yet responded to Comer’s announcement. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who figures to be a central figure in, if not the target of, any Republican-led COVID probe, indicated to USA Today earlier this week that he would cooperate and testify if called upon to do so.