WASHINGTON — Just another Tuesday afternoon and the far-flung offices of the WBI — the Waxman Bureau of Investigation, a.k.a. the self-appointed Inspector General of the World — are buzzing.
Hunched over a table in the Rayburn House Office Building, close enough to the kitchen to smell the reheated spaghetti, an investigator hunts for signs of corporate misconduct. Two floors down, in a basement cubbyhole, a former MIT scientist is busy discovering that some seniors can do better at Costco than through the new Medicare prescription plan. Up the block, at another outpost, a researcher has spread out Dick Cheney's personal finances to see how the latest GOP tax cuts will benefit administration bluebloods. Nearby, staff lawyers look at clean-air regulations, AIDS funding and whether a Wilshire Boulevard renovation project will make traffic worse....
(A)t a time when many of his Democratic colleagues have spent the last decade in a defensive crouch, outmaneuvered by their GOP rivals, Waxman has found another way to have an impact — going outside normal legislative channels to exert influence on issues he cares about. In the process, he has also made himself into what many Republicans consider the biggest pest east of the Mississippi.
The key to Waxman's unlikely success is this: He has assumed a big chunk of the watchdog role usually filled by the entire Congress, probing deep into government programs and problems to oversee a president and GOP he believes have run amok.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-waxman17jul17,1,4293498.story?coll=la-headlines-nationShould Democrats win in November, with Waxman taking control of his committees and the accompanying subpoena power, a Republican rival said: "I would suspect the Bush administration would very much know he was in charge."