Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been a pugnacious critic of the Obama administration. He makes the reasonable argument that with the federal government doing so much, an equal amount of oversight is needed. Here's a sample from a recent statement: The unparalleled encroachment of the federal government in the private sector and the lives of individual Americans that began during the Bush Administration and continues in the Obama Administration (see, for example, the Troubled Assets Protection Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the rapid growth of the federal workforce, and the health care and financial overhauls) has led to concerns of an oncoming tsunami of opacity, waste, fraud, and abuse.
Then Democrats decided not to hold a vote on their tax plan, and Issa sent out a tough statement calling them cowards for deferring the moment of decision:
“This Congress is redefining the meaning of do-nothing."
But this Congress is either passing massive legislative projects that demand vigorous and enhanced oversight, or it's "redefining the meaning of do-nothing." I have a hard time understanding how it manages to do both, unless by "redefining" Issa literally means changing the meaning of the phrase to "doing a lot."
-- Tim Fernholz
