ISSA TO LET CORPORATE AMERICA CALL THE SHOTS…. Over the summer, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made no effort to hide his intentions for 2011. If made the chairman of the House oversight committee, the right-wing Californian would simply ignore corporate misconduct, focusing instead on White House witch hunts.
“I won’t use [power] to have corporate America live in fear that we’re going to subpoena everything,” Issa vowed. “I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing.”
With that background in mind, Issa allowing his corporate allies to write his agenda for him doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wants the oil industry, drug manufacturers and other trade groups and companies to tell him which Obama administration regulations to target this year.
The incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — in letters sent to more than 150 trade associations, companies and think tanks last month — requested a list of existing and proposed regulations that would harm job growth.
It’s one thing to promise in advance to look the other way on corporate wrongdoing. But Issa is effectively telling business leaders, “Go ahead and set my oversight agenda for me.”
Remember, as far as the Republicans’ “Tea Party” base is concerned, the new GOP majority is about some kind of economic populism, and a break with entrenched special interests. Issa is offering change, but it’s the kind of change in which wealthy and powerful business leaders effectively give Congress instructions on what to do.
