{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://comer.house.gov/2022/12/comer-in-wsj-get-ready-for-republican-oversight", "Comer in WSJ: Get Ready for Republican Oversight", "2022-12-12", "2022", "2022-12", "Republican", "House", "KY", "James Comer", "C001108", "comer.house.gov", "comer", "https://comer.house.gov/media", "scraper", "WASHINGTON\u2014In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) outlines how Republicans will return the committee to its proper role of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government. He details the committee\u2019s top investigative priorities next Congress, including the border and fentanyl crises, pandemic relief fraud, botched Afghanistan withdrawal, energy crisis, Covid origins, and the Biden family\u2019s suspicious business schemes. He concludes by emphasizing that Republicans will use the power of the gavel to provide Americans the answers, transparency, and accountability they deserve.\n\nDemocrats\u2019 unchecked one-party rule over the past two years has resulted in multiple crises abroad and at home. Americans have made clear they want accountability in Washington, and Republicans are ready to deliver.\n\nOn every front, President Biden\u2019s policies have been a disaster. Americans are facing historic inflation, skyrocketing energy costs, the worst border crisis in U.S. history, and surging fentanyl overdoses. They\u2019ve witnessed our nation\u2019s standing on the world stage plummet after the Afghanistan withdrawal. Students are suffering from acute learning loss and mental-health struggles because teachers unions and Democratic politicians worked to keep schools closed.\n\nGovernmental transparency also suffered, abetting these disastrous policies. Under Democratic control, the House Oversight Committee targeted American industry instead of fulfilling its primary job of providing Americans governmental transparency. Democrats\u2019 inordinate focus on things like climate pledges made by U.S. oil and gas companies shielded the administration from meaningful oversight\u2014as is made evident by the F grade the Oversight Committee received from the nonpartisan Lugar Center.\n\nThat will change in January when the GOP assumes its House majority. In the new Congress, Republicans will return the committee to its proper role: rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government. Committee members will conduct credible oversight, identify problems, and propose reforms. Here are some of our top priorities:\n\n\u2022 Border and fentanyl crises. We will continue our investigation of the president\u2019s radical immigration agenda, which has created the worst border crisis in U.S. history. The investigation began in February 2021 when congressional digging and media reporting shed light on how Mr. Biden\u2019s policies aren\u2019t preventing human smuggling, drug cartel operations, the flow of deadly drugs such as fentanyl into American communities, and the flood of illegal immigrants across the border in flagrant violation of immigration law. Not only has the administration failed to secure the border, it is diverting nearly $600 million intended for public health to pay for its self-inflicted national-security and public-safety crisis.\n\n\u2022 Pandemic relief fraud. We owe it to Americans to identify how $560 billion\u2014as I\u2019ve estimated from watchdog, agency and media reports\u2014spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. The Biden administration has allowed fraud to run rampant within federal assistance programs. Even after the pandemic abated and many states reopened, officials pushed for more inflation-inducing government spending. Reporting also indicates that states and localities are using Covid relief funds meant to address learning loss for unrelated, politically tinged expenditures such as electric buses and controversial ideologies. Republicans will ensure that the remaining money goes to helping children harmed by localities and states\u2019 adherence to remote learning and addressing learning loss.\n\n\u2022 Afghanistan withdrawal. The Biden administration\u2019s botched exit led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and left the Afghan military confused and unprepared to defend the country. As a result, the Taliban seized American military equipment and nearly all of the progress made for women\u2019s rights in the country was reversed. We began an investigation in August 2021 into the administration\u2019s failure to conduct a safe withdrawal and the many consequences for national security. We plan to continue it.\n\n\u2022 Energy crisis. The president\u2019s war on U.S.-made fossil fuels has killed well-paying jobs in energy and driven up gas and energy prices. Yet even as Americans struggle to make ends meet, Mr. Biden has refused to unleash U.S. energy production, and instead has begged foreign dictators to pump more oil with meager price effects. Media reports say the president tried to work out a deal for Saudi Arabia to increase production ahead of the midterms. House Republicans will continue our investigation, which began in May 2022, into Mr. Biden\u2019s efforts to diminish domestic energy production as part of his administration\u2019s radical climate agenda and how he has jeopardized American energy independence.\n\n\u2022 Covid origins. Discovering the origin of Covid-19 is vital to protecting Americans from future pandemics. Evidence continues to mount that the virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. U.S. taxpayer dollars were funneled to the Wuhan lab to conduct gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, and it seems that Anthony Fauci knew that the lab-leak theory was likely true, even as he dismissed the possibility in public. We will continue to follow the facts to determine what could have been done differently to guard against the harms Americans endured during the pandemic.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T03:32:05Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://comer.house.gov/2022/12/comer-in-wsj-get-ready-for-republican-oversight"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0692030191421509, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}