Summary
The Committee on Oversight and Reform is the main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has authority to investigate the subjects within the Committee’s legislative jurisdiction as well as “any matter” within the jurisdiction of the other standing House Committees.
Subcommittees:
- Cyber Security, Information Technology and Government Innovation
- Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs
- Government Operations and the Federal Workforce
- Health Care and Financial Services
- National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs
Chair: James Comer, Kentucky (R)
Ranking Member: Jamie Raskin, Maryland (D)
Majority Staff Director: Mark Marin
Minority Staff Director: Karen McAfee
Meeting Location: 2157 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515; Phone: (202) 225-5074
Featured Video: Democracy in Danger: The Assault on Voting Rights in Texas – July 29, 2021
Web Links
OnAir Post: Oversight and Reform Committee
News
Press Releases and news can be found here at the committee website.
House Committee on Oversight and Reform – November 3, 2021
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18), senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator Brian Schatz introduced a bicameral bill today to ban all forms of disinformation about the Census.
“The U.S. Census is a crucial part of our democracy that ensures Americans are fairly represented and receive their fair share of 1.5 trillion in annual federal funding. Unfortunately, there are bad actors who purposefully push false information about the Census to discourage participation and skew the results,” said Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney. “I’m proud to join my colleagues in introducing this legislation to curb disinformation and protect the Census.”
“America’s founders included the decennial Census in the Constitution because a representative democracy depends on an accurate count of its people. The Honest Census Communications Act ensures that any attempt to intentionally spread lies about the once-in-a-decade count is met with severe consequences befitting this crime,” said Eshoo.
House Committee on Oversight and Reform – October 15, 2021
Washington, D.C. (October 15, 2021)—Today, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Committee Member Rep. Ayanna Pressley, sent a letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director Shalanda Young applauding the Biden Administration for implementing Executive Order 13985, entitled “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” and underscoring the need for robust data, assessment tools, and stakeholder engagement to ensure the success of this endeavor.
President Biden signed the historic executive order on his first day in office, directing the Domestic Policy Council and OMB to work with federal agencies to identify and remove barriers to equal opportunity and programmatic benefits for people of color and other underserved groups.
“We applaud the Biden-Harris Administration’s bold efforts to address longstanding structural inequities rooted in our nation’s historical and ongoing legacy of systemic racism, which have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic. Progress toward equity cannot be sustained without the federal government’s commitment to and development of institutional infrastructure to overcome historical injustices at scale. To ensure the success of the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda, racial equity must be central to decision-making across the federal government. This sweeping objective will require the collection of data that aligns with an up-to-date understanding of people’s identities and that reflects how diverse groups are differently situated. Most federal agencies do not yet collect this type of data,” the Members wrote.
About
Jurisdiction
The legislative jurisdiction of the Committee on Oversight and Reform includes the following areas, as set forth in House Rule X, clause 1:
Federal civil service, including intergovernmental personnel; and the status of officers and employees of the United States, including their compensation, classification, and retirement;
Municipal affairs of the District of Columbia in general (other than appropriations);
Federal paperwork reduction;
Government management and accounting measures generally;
Holidays and celebrations;
Overall economy, efficiency, and management of government operations and activities, including federal procurement;
National archives;
Population and demography generally, including the Census;
Postal service generally, including transportation of the mails;
Public information and records;
Relationship of the federal government to the states and municipalities generally; and
Reorganizations in the executive branch of the government.
The oversight responsibilities of the Committee are set forth in House Rule X, clauses 2, 3, and 4.
House Rule X, clause 2(b), provides that the Committee shall review and study on a continuing basis—
(A) the application, administration, execution, and effectiveness of laws and programs addressing subjects within its jurisdiction;
(B) the organization and operation of Federal agencies and entities having responsibilities for the administration and execution of laws and programs addressing subjects within its jurisdiction;
(C) any conditions or circumstances that may indicate the necessity or desirability of enacting new or additional legislation addressing subjects within its jurisdiction (whether or not a bill or resolution has been introduced with respect thereto); and
(D) future research and forecasting on subjects within its jurisdiction.
House Rule X, clause 3(i), provides that the Committee shall “review and study on a continuing basis the operation of Government activities at all levels with a view to determining their economy and efficiency.”
House Rule X, clause 4(c)(1), provides that the Committee shall:
(A) receive and examine reports of the Comptroller General of the United States and submit to the House such recommendations as it considers necessary or desirable in connection with the subject matter of the reports;
(B) evaluate the effects of laws enacted to reorganize the legislative and executive branches of the Government; and
(C) study intergovernmental relationships between the States and municipalities and between the United States and international organizations of which the United States is a member.
And House Rule X, clause 4(c)(2), provides that the Committee “may at any time conduct investigations of any matter without regard to clause 1, 2, 3, or this clause [of House Rule X] conferring jurisdiction over the matter to another standing committee.”
Source: Committee website
Members
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: James Comer, Kentucky
Jim Jordan, Ohio
Mike Turner, Ohio
Paul Gosar, Arizona
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Gary Palmer, Alabama
Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Pete Sessions, Texas
Andy Biggs, Arizona
Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Pat Fallon, Texas
Byron Donalds, Florida
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania
William Timmons, South Carolina
Tim Burchett, Tennessee
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia
Lisa McClain, Michigan
Lauren Boebert, Colorado
Russell Fry, South Carolina
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida
Chuck Edwards, North Carolina
Nick Langworthy, New York
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia
Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts
Gerry Connolly, Virginia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Ro Khanna, California
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York, Vice Ranking Member
Katie Porter, California
Cori Bush, Missouri
Jimmy Gomez, California
Shontel Brown, Ohio
Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Robert Garcia, California
Maxwell Frost, Florida
Becca Balint, Vermont (until June 22, 2023)
Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Greg Casar, Texas
Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Dan Goldman, New York
Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan (since September 20, 2023)
History
The panel now known as the Committee on Oversight and Reform was originally the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, created in 1927 to consolidate 11 separate Committees on Expenditures that had previously overseen the spending of various departments of the federal government.
The modern-day committee’s immediate predecessor, the Committee on Government Operations, was established in 1952. The new name was intended to reflect the committee’s broad mission: to oversee “the operations of Government activities at all levels with a view to determining their economy and efficiency”.
After Republicans gained control of the House in the 1994 elections, the committee was reorganized to include seven subcommittees instead of 14. This reorganization consolidated the jurisdiction previously covered by three full committees and resulted in a 50 percent cut in staff. In 2007, a reorganization under a new Democratic majority combined the duties of the seven subcommittees into five.
In the 106th Congress, the panel was renamed the Committee on Government Reform. While retaining the agenda of the former Committee on Government Operations, the new committee also took on the responsibilities of the former House Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service and the Committee on the District of Columbia. On January 4, 2007, the 110th Congress renamed it the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The name was changed again by the 116th Congress to its current iteration: the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Since 2007, it has been called the “Oversight Committee” for short.
Subpoena usage
In 1997, the Republican majority on the committee changed its rules to allow the chairman, Dan Burton (R-Indiana), to issue subpoenas without the consent of the committee’s ranking Democrat.[14] From 1997 to 2002, Burton used this authority to issue 1,052 unilateral subpoenas, many of them related to alleged misconduct by President Bill Clinton, at a cost of more than $35 million.
By contrast, from 2003 to 2005, under the chairmanship of Tom Davis (R-Virginia), the committee issued only three subpoenas to the Bush administration.
After Republicans retook the House in the 2010 elections, the new chairman, Darrell Issa (R-California), escalated the use of subpoenas again, issuing more than 100 in four years during the Obama administration. That was more than the combined total issued by the previous three chairmen—Davis, Henry Waxman (D-California), and Edolphus Towns (D-New York)—from 2003 to 2010.
Prominent hearings and investigations
Between 2000 and 2006, many major events and scandals in the Bush administration generated few or no subpoenas from the Republican-led committee. These events included the September 11 attacks; the leaking of classified information identifying Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame; CIA-backed abuses at Abu Ghraib prison; the Bush administration claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; illegal campaign contributions by lobbyists, including Jack Abramoff; deaths and damage due to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s weak response to Hurricane Katrina; and Philip Cooney’s suppression of data demonstrating the existence of global warming. After the release of the Downing Street memo, which contained incriminating information on the buildup to the Iraq War, Democrats in the minority were refused a hearing chamber and were forced to meet in the basement of the United States Capitol.
However, under Davis’s chairmanship from 2003 to 2007, the committee launched two controversial investigations. One of those investigations—triggered by the publication of Jose Canseco’s memoir, Juiced—concerned the use of anabolic steroids by Major League Baseball players.
In that investigation, which concerned the removal of a feeding tube from a woman in a persistent vegetative state, the committee issued a subpoena requiring Schiavo to “appear” so that members could “examine nutrition and hydration which incapacitated patients receive as part of their care”. The apparent objective of this, beyond providing information to committee members, was to delay the pending withdrawal of life support from Schiavo, whose wishes were in dispute, while Congress considered legislation specifically targeted at her case. Members of the Democratic minority opposed the action. Chairman Davis said it was “a legitimate legislative inquiry”.
The committee also investigated World Wrestling Entertainment’s wellness and drug policies, amid speculation about a possible link between steroid use and the death of WWE performer Chris Benoit.[22]
On July 8, 2009, committee Republicans released an investigative staff report discussing the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The report alleged that the government had caused the collapse by meddling in the United States’ housing and lending market in the name of “affordable housing”.
In February 2012, the committee held a hearing on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s mandate that would “require all employers to cover birth control free of cost to women”. Specifically, Republicans on the committee alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services’s rules governing exemptions for religious institutions violated the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. The chairman, Darrell Issa, said the hearing was “meant to be more broadly about religious freedom and not specifically about the contraception mandate in the Health Reform law”.
After Aaron Swartz committed suicide on January 11, 2013, the committee investigated the Justice Department’s actions in prosecuting Swartz on hacking charges. On January 28, Issa and ranking member Elijah Cummings published a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, questioning whether prosecutors had intentionally added felony counts to increase the amount of prison time Swartz faced.
On July 10, 2019 a hearing was held by the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties entitled “Kids in Cages: Inhumane Treatment at the Border” on the “inhumane treatment of children and families” inside child detention centers on the southern US border. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) chaired the session which included testimony from Yazmin Juarez, the mother of Mariee who died at the age of nineteen months while detained in a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Dilley, Texas. In his opening statement Raskin said that “hundreds of thousands of people” have responded to the “harsh policies” by deciding to “migrate now before things get even worse”.
Source: Wikipedia
Contact
Locations
Oversight and Reform Committee
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5051
Fax: (202) 225-4784
Web Links
- Government Site
- Congress.Gov
- House Telephone Directory
- OnAir Post: Oversight and Reform Committee
- Chair, James Comer
- Ranking Member, Jamie Raskin
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
Legislation
Hearings
Source: Committee website
Subcommittees
Cyber Security, Information Technology and Government Innovation
Source: Committee Website
Jurisdiction
The Subcommittee has oversight jurisdiction over federal information technology (IT), data standards and quality, cybersecurity, IT infrastructure and acquisition, emerging technologies, privacy, cloud computing, data centers and intellectual property.
The subcommittee was merged with the Subcommittee on Government Operations in the 116th Congress. The merger was undone in the 118th Congress, when the House majority was once again became Republican.
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Nancy Mace, South Carolina
WILLIAM TIMMONS SC-04
TIM BURCHETT TN-02
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE GA-14
ANNA PAULINA LUNA FL-13
NICK LANGWORTHY NY-23
ERIC BURLISON MO-07
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Gerry Connolly, Virginia
RO KHANNA CA-17
STEPHEN LYNCH MA-8
KWEISI MFUME MD-7
JIMMY GOMEZ CA-34
JARED MOSKOWITZ FL-23
Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs
Source: Committee Website
Jurisdiction
[The subcommittee] shall have oversight jurisdiction over: income inequality and policies that affect the growth and prosperity of the middle class, including education, housing, labor, trade, small business, agriculture; securities regulation; consumer protection; private sector information technology security, policy, and management; intellectual property; telecommunications; and federal acquisition policy unrelated to national security and information technology
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Patt Fallon, Chair
BYRON DONALDS FL-19
SCOTT PERRY PA-10
LISA MCCLAIN MI-09
LAUREN BOEBERT CO-03
RUSSELL FRY SC-7
ANNA PAULINA LUNA FL-13
NICK LANGWORTHY NY-23
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Cori Bush, Ranking Member
SHONTEL BROWN OH-11
MELANIE STANSBURY NM-01
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON DC
RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI IL-08
RO KHANNA CA-17
Government Operations and the Federal Workforce
Source: Committee Website
Jurisdiction
The federal civil service, including compensation, classification, and benefits
Federal property disposal
Public information and records, including the Freedom of Information Act, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Presidential Records Act
Government reorganizations and operations, including transparency, performance, grants management, and accounting measures generally
The relationship between the federal government to the states and municipalities, including unfunded mandates
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Pete Sessions, Texas
GARY PALMER AL-06
CLAY HIGGINS LA-03
ANDY BIGGS AZ-05
BYRON DONALDS FL-19
WILLIAM TIMMONS SC-04
TIM BURCHETT TN-02
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE GA-14
LAUREN BOEBERT CO-03
RUSSELL FRY SC-7
ERIC BURLISON MO-07
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
GARY PALMERAL-06
CLAY HIGGINS LA-03
ANDY BIGGS AZ-05
BYRON DONALDS FL-19
WILLIAM TIMMONS SC-04
TIM BURCHETT TN-02
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE GA-14
LAUREN BOEBERT CO-03
RUSSELL FRY SC-7
ERIC BURLISON MO-07
Health Care and Financial Services
Source: Committee Website
The Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services is a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. It was revived for the 118th Congress by chairman James Comer after Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives.
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Lisa McClain, Michigan
PAUL GOSAR AZ-09
VIRGINIA FOXX NC-05
GLENN GROTHMAN WI-06
RUSSELL FRY SC-7
ANNA PAULINA LUNA FL-13
NICK LANGWORTHY NY-23
ERIC BURLISON MO-07
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Katie Porter, California
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ NY-14
JIMMY GOMEZ CA-34
GREG CASAR TX-35
SUMMER LEE PA-12
JASMINE CROCKETT TX-30
National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs
Source: Committee Website
Jurisdiction
The subcommittee shall have oversight jurisdiction over: national security; homeland security; foreign operations, including the relationships of the United States with other nations; immigration; defense; issues affecting veterans; and oversight and legislative jurisdiction over federal acquisition policy related to national security.
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Paul Gosar, Arizona
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Pete Sessions, Texas
Andy Biggs, Arizona
Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Pat Fallon, Texas
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Robert Garcia, California
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Dan Goldman, New York
Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Hank Johnson, Georgia
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Katie Porter, California
Cori Bush, Missouri
Maxwell Frost, Florida
Coronavirus Pandemic (Select)
Source: Committee Website
Republican Members (Majority)
Chair: Brad Wenstrup, Ohio
Nicole Malliotakis, New York
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia
Debbie Lesko, Arizona
Michael Cloud, Texas
John Joyce, Pennsylvania
Ronny Jackson, Texas
Rich McCormick, Georgia
Democratic Members (Minority)
Ranking Member: Raul Ruiz, California
Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Robert Garcia, California
Ami Bera, California
Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
More Information
American Rescue Plan
Source: Committee website
Our state and local partners are facing revenue shortfalls and escalating costs as they fight to serve Americans left sick, struggling, hungry, and vulnerable by the coronavirus pandemic. While state and local revenues face stark, multi-year shortfalls, pandemic-related cost increases related to health care, jobless benefits, food assistance, and safety measures have soared.
$350 billion in relief to states, localities, Tribes, and territories is desperately needed to allow these governments to distribute vaccines, expand testing, provide lifeline services to struggling families, and save the jobs of essential public servants like teachers, firefighters, and other first responders.
The Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Resolution Act would give direct relief to states and localities to deal a decisive blow to the pandemic, providing the resources that our families, communities, and economy need to survive.
Campaign Finance
Source: Open Secrets webpages
