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OVERSIGHT WATCH

Comer dishes on subpoenas and his plans for Oversight

During the past few years, House Republicans have steadfastly resisted investigations into former President Donald Trump and ignored Democratic-issues subpoenas. Yet in the next Congress, they’ll have the power of the gavel and issuing subpoenas – and are demanding Democrats and the Biden administration comply.

We sat down with Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who’s set to lead the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the next Congress, to discuss his priorities as chair.

“I don’t believe congressional investigations have a whole lot of credibility right now. I blame Adam Schiff for that,” Comer told us, referring to the House Intelligence Committee chair and leader of Trump’s first impeachment. “But it’s also both parties to blame for investigations in the past. But I really want to change that.”

With Democrats already calling foul on Comer’s stated goal of investigating President Joe Biden’s family business dealings, that will be a tall task.

Here are the top takeaways from our conversation with Comer:

→ Comer said he won’t “abuse the subpoena ability” as chair of the Oversight Committee. “Abuse,” of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

Prominent House Republicans such as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) – now in line to be chair of the Judiciary Committee – refused to comply with subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 select committee.

Comer acknowledged his committee’s subpoenas could be ignored too, but said he wouldn’t fire off “subpoenas to everyone in a presidential administration like Elijah Cummings did.” The late Cummings chaired the committee during Trump’s presidency.

“So when you get a specific subpoena from Oversight when I’m chairman, then it’s going to mean something,” Comer said. “We’re going to be very selective in who gets subpoenas.”

→ Comer is making an investigation into the Biden’s family business dealings a top priority.

Currently, Comer said his primary focuses are alleged bank violations and suspicious business dealings conducted by Hunter Biden. Comer assailed the Biden administration for failing to provide “Suspicious Activity Reports” from banks that were flagged due to the actions of Hunter Biden and other family members.

→ Comer brushed off concerns from other House Republicans that his committee’s investigations would distract from GOP messaging and priorities. Republicans will have a razor-thin majority come January, with some GOP members holding Biden-won seats.

→ Two common refrains among House Republicans who resisted Democratic inquiries into the Trump administration were that the probes didn’t serve a “legitimate legislative purpose” and that the voters had already decided the issue by electing the president.

Comer said he wasn’t concerned if Democrats make the same arguments. The four-term lawmaker and former Kentucky agriculture commissioner pledged to pass legislation to improve transparency around how presidents and their relatives receive income, an area he noted could garner bipartisan support.

“We need to be very specific on what the immediate family members [of the president] can do with respect to lobbying,” Comer said. “That should be something that’s not partisan with the Democrats, because they’ve criticized the previous president’s son-in-law on some of that stuff.”

And Comer said he’s “pretty confident that a majority of Americans have no idea the extent to Hunter Biden’s criminal activity” and that “Joe Biden was directly involved in that.”

→ Aside from the prospective Biden family investigation, which is garnering all the headlines, Comer said the panel wants to probe the origins of Covid-19, Paycheck Protection Program and unemployment insurance fraud during the pandemic, the “debacle” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

— Max Cohen

GOVERNMENT FUNDING

Dems starting to draft FY2023 spending bills as Dec. 16 deadline looms

Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees have quietly started to put together FY 2023 spending bills, even though there’s no bipartisan agreement on a topline figure for overall spending.

But with a Dec. 16 funding deadline looming and no real progress on an omnibus package, Democrats are quietly drafting bills they hope could attract bipartisan support, according to sources familiar with the situation. These bills will include GOP and Democratic priorities, as well as earmarks sought by members and senators in both parties.

Government funding runs out on Dec. 16, and another stopgap measure to avoid a shutdown seems very likely at this point. In fact, this whole process could drag out until the next Congress. We’ll also note that everything during the last two years has taken longer than expected. Everything.

The Dec. 6 runoff in the Georgia Senate race is a big focus for Republicans especially, and there doesn’t appear to be much GOP enthusiasm for a spending deal before that’s resolved. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – key players in this debate – have also faced their own challenges the last few weeks as well, of course.

– John Bresnahan

LEADER LOOK

Kuster, Peters vie to lead moderate New Dems

The New Democrat Coalition feels set for a turn in the spotlight during the next Congress.

After years of seeing New Dems overshadowed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the two contenders to lead the moderate caucus — Reps. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) — say they’re looking to throw their weight around in 2023.

Given the narrow Republican House majority, New Dems see opportunities to intervene in key legislative battles and work across the aisle with centrist Republicans.

Kuster and Peters are both well-liked members who came to the House in 2012 by flipping red seats. They both currently serve as vice chairs of the pro-business caucus. Peters told us he wants to “use New Dems to do more of this party-wide policy work.”

“[Committees] have got into a habit where they’re kind of waiting for top-down instructions and we’re not really getting from-the-bottom-up legislation,” Peters said. “New Dems can do that. We can do that on immigration and the border. We can do that on a plan for talking to farmers. We can do that on crime.”

Kuster said her priorities are highlighting member wins in the caucus, promoting diversity and inclusion efforts and focusing on fundraising to flip the House blue in 2024. Fittingly for the moderate coalition, both candidates touted their relationships with Republicans and pledged to find bipartisan areas of agreement.

“If you look at the struggle within the Republican caucus to get on one page, I think New Dems, with the sort of more pragmatic wing of the Republican Party — people like [Brian] Fitzpatrick, John Curtis, David Joyce — will be able to create a majority around sound public policy decisions,” Kuster said.

Peters even noted he has a bill that he co-sponsored with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The legislation seeks to save historic Sequoia trees. “It’s good to have relations with Kevin McCarthy,” Peters said.

Kuster cited mental health and addiction, worker shortage remedies and immigration as areas for compromise with Republicans.

→ Another wrinkle in the race: Peters’ involvement in prescription drug reform negotiations. Peters voted against an initial reform plan in committee in 2021 before working with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to craft the provision eventually passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“What other people have brought to me and one of the reasons that I ran is that there are members of our caucus who were concerned about the way [Peters] approached the prescription drug issue,” Kuster said. “I think there were members, and particularly Frontline members, who felt that if we could have resolved that earlier in the Democratic House position, we would have been in a stronger position to negotiate with the Senate and they would have been out campaigning on it last spring.”

Peters said his work was vital in crafting the eventual compromise because “the Senate wasn’t going to pass [the prescription drug bill] as it was constructed.”

“It was my work that got something we could all pass,” Peters said. “And today, despite everybody’s saying that, ‘You know, we ruined the bill,’ the same bill is what everybody ran on prescription drugs. So it’s a huge win.”

The support: Peters is being backed by California Democratic allies including Reps. Salud Carbajal and Norma Torres, who said Peters “knows how to work with Democrats and Republicans alike.” Other Peters backers are Reps. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.) and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), who praised Peters’ “forward-thinking and innovative leadership” on cost-of-living and public safety issues.

Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a fellow Frontliner who works with Kuster on mental health and addiction, told us that the New Hamphshire Democrat is “a great member because she’s a great worker. And that’s what the New Dems need to become a little bit more relevant.” Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) also praised Kuster for her “commitment to diversity and inclusion” and her work on a bipartisan task force to address the mental health and addiction crises.

— Max Cohen

THE CAMPAIGN

→ Update: Alaska election officials will begin tabulating ranked-choice votes today to determine who wins in the contest between incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka. Murkowski is leading heading into today’s count and is expected to win, but the results won’t be certified until Nov. 29. You can watch the count starting at 4 p.m. Alaska time here.

→ Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) has a new creative ad running in Albany, Macon and Savannah, saying Republican Herschel Walker is not telling voters what he would do as a senator. At the end, Warnock throws a bag of dog feces in the trash and says “I think Georgians will see his ads for what they are.” Get it?

– Jake Sherman

MOMENTS

President Joe Biden is in Nantucket and has no public events scheduled. Vice President Kamala Harris is in Los Angeles and has no public events. Congress is out.

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ “Court Appears Ready to End Special Master Review in Trump Files Inquiry,” by Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer

WaPo

→ “At Qatar’s World Cup, Biden’s envoy balances firmness and flattery,” by John Hudson in Doha

→ “Crypto exchange has substantial ‘missing’ assets, FTX lawyer says,” by Steven Zeitchik and Tory Newmyer

Bloomberg

→ “Taiwan Says It’s in ‘Comfortable’ Position After Xi-Biden Talks,” by Sarah Zheng