Get well quickly, Rep. Waxman!

We need you!:

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is still in a Los Angeles hospital after being admitted on Tuesday. The 69-year-old chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee had fainted and is under evaluation.

The congressman was not feeling well when he fainted, but is now "in good spirits," the Los Angeles Times quotes spokesman Karen Lightfoot as saying. He is still at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for some tests.

Congress is currently in a week-long July 4 recess and will return to session on Monday. But Waxman had been pushing himself hard in the past weeks, crafting along with Environment Subcommittee chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) a landmark energy bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which Democrats were able to pass last Friday despite enormous opposition from Republicans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and initially, even farm state Democrats.

Why?
Waxman Wants State Dep't DynCorp Documents

Letter From Rep. Waxman To Banks Questions Ethics Of Using Taxpayer Funds For Bonuses

Rep. Waxman Announces Democratic Membership of Oversight Committee

What a quick google search brings up. There's no better bulldog in Congress for getting oversight enacted and people held accountable.

Explains why Blackwater / Xe is getting out of the business

The taps are being shut off and people are demanding to see the paperwork:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered an overhaul of the way the U.S. government awards contracts for private sector work, reversing a Bush administration policy that in some cases led to federal investigations of procurement practices and no-bid contracts.

Obama joined Republican Sen. John McCain, his presidential campaign rival, and other congressional figures to announce an executive memorandum that commits his administration to a new set of marching orders for awarding contracts. Obama said "the days of giving government contractors a blank check are over" and said changes could save up to $40 billion a year.

One area in particular that is targeted is no-bid contracts, which the administration is seeking to change so that there will be more competition for government-paid work.

The article continues: [my bold]

The new administration argued that its Republican predecessor's contract spending had doubled to more than $500 billion over the last eight years.

"Far too often, the spending is plagued by massive cost overruns, outright fraud, and the absence of oversight and accountability," Obama said. "In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition; in others, contractors actually oversee other contractors."

Dozens of people have been charged with bribery and other contract fraud crimes as part of a Justice Department crackdown on contract and procurement fraud. Fraud has been particularly prevalent following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, where billions of dollars was spent quickly and often with little oversight.

More than 140 investigations are under way into allegations of contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

Oh no!! Does this mean the end to the development of the Puke Ray?

"In Iraq, too much money has been paid out for services that were never performed, buildings that were never completed, companies that skimmed off the top," Obama said. "At home, too many contractors have been allowed to get away with delay after delay after delay in developing unproven weapons systems."

"It's time for this waste and inefficiency to end," the president said.

Things are really going to change now. Waste and inefficiency were the two most favorite words in the Bush administration.

Like salt to slugs

Waxman is on the prowl and the greedy, bloated and gluttonous, are hit with the spotlight of doom: 'Oversight'. As in explain yourself:

It has been six long, dysfunctional years since it made an appearance in Washington, so one can be forgiven if one has forgotten what it looks like, but this thing called Congressional "oversight" over administration conduct is now returning to Washington. Henry Waxman convened a hearing today, with former Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer as the featured witness, to begin looking into war profiteering in Iraq, and specifically, how much money was squandered through corruption and cronyism on Iraq's "reconstruction".

This was just the first day, and there is nothing cataclysmic, but several excerpts from the hearing illustrate the importance and potential potency of oversight in uncovering wrongdoing by the Executive branch. The first clip entails an examination of the shoddy accounting supervision and cronyism which ensured that there was no meaningful supervision over the expenditure of funds.

Update: Waxman's Oversight and Government Reform.

Henry Waxman: On your mark...

Get set....
"WAXMAN: It seems to me our top priority as the chief investigative and oversight committee is to make sure that taxpayers' funds are no being wasted, that there's no fraud and abuse. These are the taxpayers' dollars, and what we've seen so far in Iraq, according to the government's own auditors, is billions of dollars that have gone to waste and corruption and graft. We're going to look into that more carefully. Only a small part of the money spent in Iraq has been audited, but what we've seen is very, very frightening."

Because nobody likes oversight....

"Business interests, seizing on concerns that a law passed in the wake of the Enron scandal has overreached, are advancing a broad agenda to limit government oversight of private industry, including making it tougher for investors to sue companies and auditors for fraud.

A group that has drawn support from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. plans to issue a report tomorrow that argues that the United States may be losing its preeminent position in global capital markets to foreign stock exchanges because of costly regulations and nettlesome private lawsuits."