Chairman Elijah Cummings wants to rebuild staffing, but his GOP counterpart does not
As House Democrats ramp up their oversight investigations into President Donald Trump’s administration, businesses, and 2016 campaign, at least one Republican has found a new battleground to push back: funding for the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
That panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, asked the House Administration Committee on Tuesday for a funding increase of 4 percent this year and 10 percent next year over funding levels from the previous, GOP-controlled 115th Congress.
But Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the Oversight panel, opposed Cummings’ budget request, citing the national debt and criticizing Democratic committee members’ investigative priorities. The Oversight panel — which is investigating the Trump administration’s security clearance policy and the president’s potential conflicts of interest stemming from his businesses, among other threads of inquiry — could use that extra funding to fill “essential” staff positions that Cummings asserted on Tuesday have “long been vacant.”