Chairman Comer Shuts Down Ranking Member Connolly’s Plan for Real Oversight After Republicans Shrink from Duty

Washington, D.C. (February 25, 2025). Today at a Business Meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to authorize the Committee's oversight plan, Chairman Comer suppressed the voice and rights of the minority by refusing to consider Ranking Member Gerald E. Connolly's amendment to the Republicans' inadequate, stale, and weak oversight plan.  This past week, Republicans received an earful from constituents about Co-Presidents Trump and Musk's path of destruction.  Now, instead of providing critical oversight on the damage being done to the people's government, Republicans chose to silence those who seek to hold this wannabe king and unelected billionaire accountable of something they likely wish they could have done to their own constituents at their disastrous town halls.  Below are the remarks given by Ranking Member Connolly, as prepared for delivery. 

Click here to read the Oversight Plan Ranking Member Connolly prepared to introduce. 

Remarks on Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute
Ranking Member Gerald E. Connolly 
Business Meeting: Authorization & Oversight Plan of the 
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
February 25, 2025

Today, we are considering the Committee's Authorization and Oversight Plan for the 119th Congress.  At its core, this document should serve as a roadmap for the Committee's work, an articulation of our constitutional responsibilities and a demonstration of our unwavering commitment to accountability, transparency, and good governance. 

But what has been presented by the Republican Majority is not a serious or comprehensive plan for congressional oversight.  Rather, it is Exhibit A of the Majority's unilateral retreat from Article I of the Constitution and their duty to conduct meaningful oversight of the Executive Branch, particularly when that Executive Branch is led by a president of their own party.

The sins of omission in the Majority's plan are damning.  It is as if this Committee, which should serve as a proud sentinel of accountability, has chosen to don blinders, shielding itself from the very real abuses of power that we have witnessed during the first month of the Trump Administration. 

That is why I intend to offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute, which would more clearly identify the urgent oversight priorities before the Committee.  My amendment would restore this Committee's proper role as a watchdog, not a lapdog. It would ensure the Committee investigates urgent matters that sit at the heart of its legislative and oversight jurisdiction issues that the Majority's plan conveniently ignores.

Among the many crises demanding our attention, we must examine President Trump's infamous Friday night massacre of 17 inspectors general across 18 agencies and departments as a blatant effort to purge the federal government of its independent overseers and lower a veil of darkness to conceal the waste and corruption sure to follow.

This Committee must investigate the Trump Administration's purge of non-partisan, civil servants, which will have catastrophic results for the American people who rely on our government for services and benefits.  The Administration is engaged in a rapid and sweeping effort to purge the federal workforce through mass terminations of new or recently transferred employees, scam resignation offers, efforts to replace career professionals with partisan loyalists, attempts to eliminate entire agencies, and general threats of mass firings based on arbitrary decrees from Elon Musk.  The Administration's concerted attacks on federal employees risks grinding the essential functions of our government to a halt, and when they do, it is going to be the American people who suffer most.

The most glaring example in which the Republican Majority has abandoned the Article 1 duties of Congress is the Administration's unconstitutional impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds.  Whether through the attempted elimination of entire agencies established in statute, such as USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the Administration's disastrous federal funding freeze, the Administration's impoundment broadside against congressional authority cannot be ignored by this Committee. Congress, not the Executive Branch, has the power of the purse. That has been reaffirmed by the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court, time and time again. 

And at the center of many of these crises that scream out for Congressional oversight sits Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who gave President Trump and Congressional Republicans nearly $300 million in campaign donations in 2024 alone.  In return, Mr. Musk received the reins of exactly one United States federal government.  Mr. Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have since gone on a rampage. They have inflicted their brand of cruel and arbitrary chaos on our government by targeting agencies for elimination with outright lies, infiltrating sensitive federal payment and taxpayer data systems, and bypassing congressional authority to promote Mr. Musk's financial and political interests. 

Mr. Musk and DOGE have shielded themselves from critical oversight mechanisms, silenced career public servants who dare to question their actions, and hastily developed false savings metrics to justify their actions.  Their reckless and self-serving agenda has left agencies in disarray, eroded public trust, and placed essential government functions at risk, all under the guise of so-called efficiency.

President Trump and Mr. Musk do not have a mandate to do what they are doing. President Trump did not even win a majority of the popular vote, much less a mandate.  And Mr. Musk is an unelected billionaire.  Their approval ratings are falling faster than the stock market.  And my Republican colleagues are getting an earful back home from constituents who are fed up with the Trump-Musk wrecking ball that is destroying their government.  If my colleagues think it is bad now, just wait until the American people start to hear what Republicans are willing to cut in order to deliver tax cuts for billionaires. 

The Majority may have no interest oversight of the Executive Branch, but the American people do.  They expect this Committee to do its job.  They expect us to provide a check on executive overreach, to expose corruption and self-dealing, to safeguard the institutions that uphold our democracy, and, above all, bring transparency and accountability to government.

If the Majority continues to abdicate its duty, that is their choice.  But let the record reflect that today, we had an opportunity to be responsive to an American public calling out for accountability. 

And Oversight Democrats are answering that call.  In the past month, we have pursued nearly two dozen investigations of the Administration, made more than 100 related requests for information and documents, and exposed the systemic abuses, conflicts of interest, and unlawful actions that have become the hallmark of this Administration.  Our work has shed light on the Administration's attempts to silence independent oversight, conceal critical public records, and erode the safeguards that protect taxpayer dollars.  And we are just getting started.

Click here to read Ranking Member Connolly's Oversight Plan.