Darrell Issa, Fred Upton Talk Oversight; Allen West, Mike Lee on Tea Party Conservatives
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT:
The following is a rush transcript of the January 2, 2010, edition of "Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace." This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, ANCHOR: I'm Chris Wallace. This is "Fox News Sunday."
Ringing in 2011 with a new-look Congress. With the Republicans in charge of the House, how much will they shake up Washington? We'll ask two new committee chairmen, Darrell Issa who will have broad powers to investigate the White House and Fred Upton who will dig in to health care reform and energy policy.
Then, what effect will the new Tea Party-backed members of Congress have on Capitol Hill? We'll talk with two of them, incoming Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Congressman Allen West of Florida.
Plus, has the Obama administration figured out how to go around lawmakers and impose new regulations on us? Our Sunday panel will have a fair and balanced debate.
And a remarkable story of courage from our power player of the week. All right now on "Fox News Sunday."
Hello again and happy New Year from Fox News in Washington. All eyes will be on House Republicans this week when they take control from Democrats. From investigating the White House to looking for ways to undo Obamacare, our guests will be key players.
Congressman Darrell Issa who will chair the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Congressman Fred Upton, who will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee. And gentlemen, happy New Year and welcome to "Fox News Sunday."
REP. FRED UPTON, R-MICH.: Happy New Year.
REP. DARRELL ISSA, R-CALIF.: Happy New Year to you.
WALLACE: Let's start with the big picture. The two of you wrote an article together in the Washington Times in November under the headline "Reclaiming the Right to Oversight," in which you said this, "The new majority in Congress certainly has its work cut out to undo the big government havoc that was wrought during the Democratic one- party reign over the past two years.
Congressman Upton, let me start with you. Given the fact that Republicans still don't have control of the Senate, still don't have control of the White House, how much can you and the House do to undo and block the Obama agenda?
UPTON: Well, we can actually do a lot. I was glad to see the president talk yesterday in his radio address about jobs and the economy, reducing the size of government and reducing the deficit.
We're going to try to help them do that job. We are going to have a very aggressive oversight subcommittee in my committee, and I know that Darrell is going to do the same with his full committee.
We are going to be working together. We are going to be looking to identify programs that don't work, programs that ought to be cut, working with our leadership, Boehner and Cantor, to bring up spending reductions virtually every week, as we've done without success this last year to really get the job done.
WALLACE: Congressman Issa, White House officials have already said they're going to hire more lawyers to deal with all the oversight investigations, particularly coming from your committee. Are they going to need them?
ISSA: They're going to need more accountants. The fact is that in the 1980s, Congress did about 1,600 days of oversight. That's a lot more than my committee alone could ever do.
Last year, we did less than 400, far less. And that's with you being able to call an oversight, whether it is or it isn't. Looking for the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, Office of Management and Budget, the president's Office of Management and Budget views $125 billion of misspending by Medicare, and yet year after year it doesn't change.
That's 10 percent of the deficit that would go away if we simply stop paying to people who don't exist their claims. There is so much opportunity, but it's more of an accounting function than legal function. It's more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House.
And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we'll be.
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT Darrell Issa, Fred Upton Talk Oversight; Allen West, Mike Lee on Tea Party Conservatives | Fox News Sunday
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