House Republicans Must Get Tough on Oversight Investigations in 2023, Hill Veterans Say

FBI Director Christopher Wray (R) and Attorney General Merrick Garland speak at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 24, 2022. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

If voters hand Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives, Republican lawmakers involved in oversight investigations of the Biden administration in 2023 should get tough, longtime congressional aides and observers told The Epoch Times.

The biggest obstacle they'll face in the 118th Congress, which convenes on Jan. 3, 2023, will be the refusal by the president’s appointees, especially Attorney General Merrick Garland, to cooperate with legitimate congressional oversight requests, according to Mike Howell, who worked on high-profile investigations in both the Senate and House.

“That’s not a hypothetical, that’s just what’s going to happen,” Howell told The Epoch Times when asked how congressional probes should respond if, for example, the Department of Justice (DOJ) declines to prosecute executive branch officials who defy congressional subpoenas.

“What kind of leverage do you have over Merrick Garland at that point? The only things you really have are public shaming, impeaching him, and defunding operations. That’s why it’s so important to put the investigations before the funding.”

Howell pointed to the vote coming in December, during the lame-duck session of the 117th Congress, on extending a government funding resolution that expires on Dec. 19. If the extension “goes deep into 2023,” as Democrats will likely seek, Republican oversight efforts next year will lose significant leverage, he said.

Under the Constitution, Congress has a great deal of leverage over the executive branch, including controlling how much the government spends, what it spends tax dollars on, how, and when.

That means Congress can reduce or eliminate funding for specific programs, as well as increase or lower the number of executive branch employees. The president can threaten to veto such measures, but presidential vetoes can be overridden with two-thirds votes in Congress. The party that controls the Senate can also delay or refuse to confirm presidential appointees.

Howell became director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project in 2018, after serving during the Trump administration in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Legal Counsel as the chief congressional oversight point of contact.

He previously worked for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, as well as for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) when he was chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) when he was chairman of the oversight panel’s national security subcommittee.

Another obstacle that oversight investigations will face is the sheer number of issues that require attention.

“The only limiting principles here are time, resources, and how much can people really take and digest in terms of the public appetite,” Howell said. “Every congressional committee has something like an impeachable offense or a national crisis. You could be looking at 50 different things at the same time.

“But what I view as the most important—it’s got to be No. 1—is Hunter Biden and Biden family corruption, because it just goes to so many different things. It goes to why Biden is in the White House and the election interference in 2020. It goes into the integrity of the FBI. It goes into Big Tech and collusion. It’s really the central node in so many different things.”

Howell expects a huge test of Republican oversight determination when they seek to expose all of the facts about the FBI’s role in persuading Facebook, Twitter, and other major Big Tech social media platforms during the late stages of the 2020 campaign to censor stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“So many Republicans historically have been comfortable using oversight tools and powers to go after the federal government,” Howell said. “Are they going to be willing [with Big Tech] to send a subpoena and a huge document request with the threat of being held in contempt? Are they going to depose mid-level Facebook managers in the censorship chain?”

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) President Tom Schatz told The Epoch Times that he expects an early battle in a Republican-controlled House will be over defunding the 87,000 new IRS agents authorized by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a move that will almost certainly draw a presidential veto.

“One of the first tests of how the presidential veto will work in response to the new Congress will be when House Republicans eliminate the money provided for 87,000 new IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Schatz said.

“Hopefully, there will be many such tests and battles over both how much the government should be spending, as well as where—and how—it should be spent. The appropriations bills coming out of the House will likely prohibit federal agencies (particularly the Department of Defense) from prioritizing ‘climate change’ and ‘equity’ in how they allocate their money.”

Schatz, who has been with CAGW since it was formed in 1986 during the Reagan administration, became its top executive in 1992.

Another obstacle that will rear its head when those “tests and battles” come will be how much flexibility Biden’s base of far-left progressives will allow him, according to a longtime Republican congressional investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Biden actually has a history of being a dealmaker on budget matters. Remember the negotiations during the Obama administration that ultimately gave us sequestration? Will the left even allow him to do that?” the investigator asked.

He was referring to the 2011 budget deal between the Republican House majority elected in the 2010 Tea Party revolution and the Obama administration. The law that resulted from the deal is known as the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Grover Norquist, another Capitol Hill staff veteran and congressional expert, cautioned oversight investigators to not “swing for the fences.” Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), was a member of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s team that in 1994 won the first Republican House majority in more than 40 years.

“Successful oversight moves step by step—empowering Congress to enact stronger laws with popular support. There are few ‘knockouts’ in congressional hearings. The few are remembered. But this is hard work. Takes time. Moves in inches. Don’t start if you are not ready to work hard, long, and slow,” Norquist warned.

He also pointed to the national news media as a major problem for oversight investigators.

“The biggest challenge for congressional oversight of federal agencies by Republican congressmen is a national establishment media that is not interested in reporting on fraud, waste, corruption discovered by GOP congressmen,” Norquist told The Epoch Times. “They view all such exposes as a repudiation of their own failings as reporters. How did Republican congressmen find scandal X when liberal reports failed to do so over decades.”

Asked about the effect of the House’s Jan. 6 committee on oversight in 2023, Howell pointed to multiple ways in which that panel redefined permissible inquiries.

“We need to understand that they broke through any protective guards and precedent on oversight. They subpoenaed bank records of private individuals and their phone records,” he said.

“There is no reason why Republicans on Day 1 shouldn’t get Verizon’s general counsel on the phone, the big banks’ general counsels, hand them all a list and say ‘Hey, you guys cooperated with the January 6 committee. We want to know everyone involved in the border crisis ... in government or out of government.

“We want their text messages; we want their bank records. You did it for them, and you better do it for us.'”