Davis, Issa Fire Back At Waxman; Waxman Asks IG For Docs

Reps. Tom Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) are unhappy with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.On Friday, Waxman accused the pair failing to oversee the Minerals Management Service when they were in charge of the committee and for having a myopic focus on the Clinton administration instead.

Nonsense, say Davis and Issa in a letter back to Waxman today. The truth, they write, is that Waxman stopped being interested in investigations once he became chairman. GOP committee staffer Frederick Hill said that Waxman "disregarded his own calls for the investigation to continue because he’s more concerned about using the committee’s time for political theatre to generate headlines than he is about finding waste, fraud, and abuse like the billions of taxpayer dollars lost by MMS."

A Democratic committee aide noted that House and Senate committees have held ten hearings into MMS since Democrats took Congress and that another is scheduled for this week. The oversight committee did not hold all of those hearings so as to avoid overlap, said the aide.

For his part, Waxman sent a letter to the Interior Department inspector general today calling on him to turn over documents related to the investigation. Both letters are in full after the jump...
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