White House Responds To Waxman

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel has a response to the report by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report charges the administration with improperly using taxpayer money for political purposes. Stanzel writes, in an e-mail to Crypter Dan Reilly:

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman has released a draft report on political activities in Washington in an attempt to score political points. Do you have your “Dog Bites Man” headline ready?

For many, many years, throughout Republican and Democrat Administrations, there has been an Office of Political Affairs. The office is there to assist the President in his role as head of his party. For decades, Administrations have briefed their political appointees on the landscape in which they are working to implement the President’s vision and Cabinet officials have traveled to talk about the important priorities of the Administration. Trips are paid for following rules that have been on the books since the 1980s.

Waxman endeavors tend to be a colossal waste of time and taxpayer money. This one is no different. Over the course of the last two years, Bush Administration officials have provided more than 1,800,000 pages of documents in response to more than 1,200 requests for documents, interviews or testimony from this Democratic Congress. More than 1,100 executive branch officials have testified during more than 1,300 oversight hearings held by this Democratic Congress. Administration officials have spent over 168,000 hours responding to the hundreds of different investigations launched by a Democratic Congress which failed to pass even one appropriations bill in the normal manner.

Rather than spend time focusing on Congressman Waxman’s transparent attempt to make political hay with his draft press report, we’ll continue to center our attention on more important matters like stabilizing the economy, keeping America safe and working with state and local officials in California to respond to the raging wildfires.