Breaking Update — ‘Disappointed’ Issa May Move to Hold Holder in Contempt (UPDATED)
BREAKING UPDATE:
The Hill reports that President Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House panel ahead of a scheduled panel vote where Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to be held in contempt of Congress:
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was set to vote on Wednesday to hold Holder in contempt of Congress after a last-ditch effort to reach a deal over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious failed.
A White House aide told The Hill in an email that there is precedent for such executive privilege, saying “President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege 6 times, Clinton 14 times – both of whom protected the same category of documents we’re protecting today.”
UPDATE:
In an evening update, The Hill is now reporting that a vote Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress will move forward after “a last-ditch effort to reach a deal over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious appeared to fail.”
Townhall.com reports that Issa said that there is still a chance that Holder would submit the requested documents tonight but that a contempt vote is still scheduled for Wednesday and Issa has released an official statement.
“I had hoped that after this evening’s meeting I would be able to tell you that the Department had delivered documents that would justify the postponement of tomorrow’s vote on contempt. The Department told the Committee on Thursday that it had documents it could produce that would answer our questions. Today, the Attorney General informed us that the Department would not be producing those documents. The only offer they made involved us ending our investigation.
“While I still hope the Department will reconsider its decision so tomorrow’s vote can be postponed, after this meeting I cannot say that I am optimistic. At this point, we simply do not have the documents we have repeatedly said we need to justify the postponement of a contempt vote in committee.”
==
Original Post:
The Hill reports that “a disappointed” Darrell Issa plans to move forward with a vote Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, unless Holder delivers documents demanded by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee later on Tuesday night. Until he receives them, Issa would plan to move forward with the contempt vote, according to The Hill.
The documents Issa wants are related to the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation that his panel has been investigating.
The Hill:
Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, said he believed Issa’s mind was made up about the contempt vote before the meeting.
“It appears that the chairman made up his mind even before we stepped into the room,” he said following the meeting, which lasted roughly 30 minutes.
Issa’s has been waging a months-long battle against the Justice Department in an attempt to get documents and information about how much lead agency officials knew about the controversial “gun-walking” used in Operation Fast and Furious.
Read more here.
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From Mr. Issa’s website:
“As the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, we will work with our colleagues in the minority to exercise effective oversight over the federal government and will work proactively to investigate and expose waste, fraud, and abuse.”
From the Heritage Foundation, one of Mr. Issa’s promoters, here is a 2005 report on what the committee could be investigating in it’s spare time from Mr. Holder’s situation:
[A real war on government waste could easily save over $100 billion annually without harming the legitimate operations and benefits of government programs. As a first step, lawmakers should address the 10 following examples of egregious waste.
1. The Missing $25 Billion
The government knows that $25 billion was spent by someone, somewhere, on something, but auditors do not know who spent it, where it was spent, or on what it was spent.
2. Unused Flight Tickets Totaling $100 Million
A recent audit revealed that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million.
3. Embezzled Funds at the Department of Agriculture
The USDA has pledged a thorough investigation, but it will have a huge task: 55,000 USDA credit cards are in circulation, including 1,549 that are still held by people who no longer work at the USDA.[4]
4. Credit Card Abuse at the Department of Defense
The Defense Department has uncovered its own credit card scandal. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 for admission to entertainment events, $48,250 for gambling, $69,300 for cruises, and $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.[5]
5. Medicare Overspending
For example, Medicare pays as much as eight times what other federal agencies pay for the same drugs and medical supplies.
6. Funding Fictitious Colleges and Students
Tracking students across federal programs, verifying loan application data with IRS income data, and implementing controls to prevent the disbursement of loans to fraudulent applicants could save taxpayers billions of dollars.
7. Manipulating Data to Encourage Spending
.. given the combination of Congress’s thirst for pork-barrel projects and the Corps’ built-in incentives to approve projects that will increase its budget, real reforms seem unlikely.
8. State Abuse of Medicaid Funding Formulas
Minor reforms enacted by HHS in 2001 and 2002 are expected to save Medicaid $70 billion over the next decade. A small sample of financing schemes uncovered in a few states suggests that, if Congress acts, even larger savings are available.[18]
9. Earned Income Tax Credit Overpayments
The earned income tax credit (EITC) provides $31 billion in refundable tax credits to 19 million low-income families. The IRS estimates that $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion of this amount-nearly one-third-is wasted in overpayments.
10. Redundancy Piled on Redundancy
Government’s layering of new programs on top of old ones inherently creates duplication.
Well, Issa has got what he seems to have been maneuvering towards all along.
Over and over his stated concern is the family of one dead agent and “Mexican citizens.”
This is disingenuous in the extreme. Four thousand dead servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan nationals would seem, therefore, far MORE immediate, but that doesn’t get Issa and the GOP the scandal that they’ve desperately been trying to “Clintonize” Obama with since long before the election.
Well, now he’s got his wish, but these things have a way of backfiring. Just ask Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr.