Waxman vows to keep watch for the taxpayers

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http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2464345

Waxman vows to keep watch for the taxpayers
House veteran takes up gavel of reform committee
By AIMEE CURL

January 07, 2007

The new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has a full dance card these days. When he’s not organizing his panel and crafting its oversight agenda, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is taking office calls from high-ranking administration officials. The Office of Management and Budget’s No. 2, Clay Johnson, for one, glided out of Waxman’s Rayburn office, entourage in tow, one recent December afternoon.

Moments later, Waxman said casually that they’d been talking about procurement.
“I expressed my concern that a lot of the contracting mistakes seem to happen over and over again — monopoly contracts, no-bid contracts. What we saw in Iraq is also what we saw in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. The result is that many of these strategies have resulted in a lot of wasted dollars and a lot of waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “Procurement and contracting will be a big issue for us.”

Waxman, a 32-year veteran of the House, represents a district in Southern California that includes Santa Monica, Malibu and West Los Angeles. He gained renown the last time the Democrats were in power when, as chairman of a health and environment subcommittee, he called the heads of big tobacco to testify— and they declared under oath that nicotine isn’t addictive.

In the weeks leading up to and following the election, the new chairman of the committee having one of the widest reaches on Capitol Hill has quietly added “oversight” to its title, but he’s kept a low profile. He’s given few interviews and held his cards close.

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