Democrats may use probes to force policy shifts
WASHINGTON -- The new Democratic leaders in Congress are likely to move quickly to use their investigative powers as a key lever to force changes in the administration's policies on the Iraq war and domestic spying, according to congressional staff members.
Despite the conciliatory language this week between the White House and the new leaders of Congress, Democrats expect to launch probes into the administration's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq and its domestic wiretapping program and into Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, current and former aides said.
The goal, they said, will be to force changes by shedding light on problems with the existing policies.
During the current Congress, Democrats pushed hard to interview administration officials under oath on each of these issues, but were blocked by Republican committee chairmen.
And while some Democratic leaders such as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware warned this week that the party should not go overboard in pursuing investigations, interviews with House aides suggest that party leaders see the investigations as a key -- and in some ways the most important -- tool for exerting pressure on the administration regarding Iraq.
"You can expect Democratic-led committees, in many cases in cooperation with the Republican leadership at the committee level, to have some vigorous oversight until there is some consensus on what to do on Iraq," said David Dumke , former legislative director for Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is expected to head the Energy and Commerce Committee.
James Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said yesterday that the senator intended to "push to finalize" the investigation of whether the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld misused prewar intelligence about Iraq's arms programs.
An investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, set up to analyze intelligence about Iraq, has made so little progress since it began in 2004 that Reid invoked a rarely used rule to force Congress into closed session in November 2005 to draw attention to it.
After the closed session, Democratic staff members declared the inquiry "dead," because West Virginia's John D. Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, could not persuade the panel's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts of Kansas, to issue subpoenas to administration officials.
Meanwhile, an aide to Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat slated to head the House Judiciary Committee, said the senator intends to hold hearings on the president's domestic wiretapping program, the subject of a bill Bush has yet to get passed.
Conyers drew fire earlier this year from conservatives for issuing a report that concluded that Bush violated civil liberties and that could constitute an "impeachable offense."
But in a press release this week, he dismissed the idea that he would pursue impeachment, calling it a "right-wing effort to distort" his position.
"The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table," he said of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California . "I am in total agreement with her on this issue."
A third probe is expected to delve into a secretive energy task force Cheney headed in 2001 , whose findings became the basis of a sweeping energy bill passed by Congress.
The task force divulged so little information about the role of energy company executives in its deliberations that the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, took the almost unheard-of step of filing a lawsuit against the administration to open task force records. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2002.
Dingell was "definitely frustrated" by the resistance to his inquiries into the task force, recalled Dumke, Dingell's legislative director at the time.
"It certainly is an issue that is going to be revisited," Dumke said, adding that he expects either Dingell's committee or the Government Reform Committee, slated to be headed by Henry A. Waxman of California, will take up the issue again.
Yesterday, Waxman told the Associated Press that his most difficult task "will be to pick and choose" what issues to investigate.
"I'm going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything," he said.
In the past, Waxman pushed for probes on no-bid contracts awarded to
Congressional aides contended that it could take time to finalize the list of subjects the party wants to tackle, a decision they say will be made in the coming weeks, after the leadership of the various committees and subcommittees are decided.
Some Democrats are urging the committees to be as aggressive as possible, arguing that oversight hearings are long overdue and one of the only ways for Congress to rein in an administration that has thrived on secrecy.
"Laws were broken," said James Zogby , chairman of the Democratic National Committee's resolutions committee.
"Will there be hearings? Yes. Will some people be indicted? They may be," he said.
But Biden, a presidential hopeful who is expected to head the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters this week that Democrats should not use their clout to initiate numerous probes. He said they should instead focus on building bipartisan consensus around a plan that might stabilize Iraq enough to begin pulling out US troops.
"We have time to go back and get a more accurate record for history," said Biden. "We don't have a lot of time to try to save us in Iraq."
Conservatives maintain that the hearings would be a way for Democrats to score political points and avoid coming up with solutions.
"No one has got a solution to Iraq at this stage," said Joshua Muravchik, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank. "The Democrats proved that they have an absolutely winning formula in saying that Iraq is George Bush's problem. I think the last thing the Democrats want to do is assume responsibility for Iraq."
The most direct way for Congress to force changes in Iraq policy would be to withhold funding for the war, but such a move would mean cutting off supplies to US troops, and Democratic leaders, including the incoming Senate majority whip, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, have said they are not considering it.
Instead, many Democrats said hearings and investigations are the best way to get the administration to reconsider its approaches to Iraq and the war on terrorism.
Mara Rudman, a former congressional aide and chief of staff of the National Security Council under the Clinton administration, said, "Being forced to have more of a conversation with Congress, hopefully they will get better at having a conversation with the rest of the world."
