It’s been a busy week already
It's been a busy new year already for Darrell Issa as he gets set up at the Oversight Committee. He started with a tour of the Sunday talk shows, walking back some particularly incendiary comments he made to Rush Limbaugh in October. But when then didn't work out quite as effectively as he'd hoped, he went back to CNN yesterday to backpedal further and argue over the meaning of the word "corrupt."
He visited FoxNews as well on Sunday, where he predicted "a constant battle over jobs and the economy" with the White House. He echoed the same sentiment on CBS's Face the Nation, citing an alleged $125 billion in improper payments to Medicare recipients. But as PolitiFact points out in rating Issa's assertion false, the actual amount is less than 40% of Issa's number.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the new ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, is staffing up with some serious muscle for the next two years with Issa. Cummings said he's putting together a "staff of superstars" and has spent the week going toe to toe in the media with Issa over his recent letter inviting corporate special interests to make lists of things for the committee to investigate. Issa has remained unrepentent, while Cummings described the move as “inviting businesses to tell us what they want us to do as opposed to protecting the American people.”
As the new GOP majority took over in the House, Issa was left stuck with many of his fellow Republicans between repealing health care and changing spending habits. Hoping to split the difference, the GOP opted to exempt the costs of repealing health care -- a process which would add $230 billion to the federal deficit over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office -- from its new 'Cut-Go' rule requiring new spending to be paid for. And for their trouble, 32 million Americans would lose coverage and coverage would be both worse and more expensive.
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posted by Lucas O’Connor at 7:31 am