President Obama’s time in office has been marked by unprecedented executive overreach. Over the last seven years, Administration officials have gone to new lengths — circumventing Congress, disregarding the Constitution, and breaking the law — to impose a Washington-knows-best agenda on the American people.
Specifically, the Administration has:
- Illegally spent billions of taxpayer dollars to fund key parts of Obamacare without a constitutionally-required appropriation from Congress.
- Obstructed congressional investigations and withheld information from Congress without the legally-required justification for doing so.
- Misused civil asset forfeiture policies and wrongly-seized hard-earned dollars from law-abiding small business owners and farmers.
As Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam (R-IL) described it at a recent hearing:
“There is this feeling … that it’s okay to cut down laws, it’s okay to cut through things in cloaking ourselves in good intentions. It’s a dangerous game.
“If we accept this then – mark my words – there will come a day when there’s going to be a different administration or a different disposition or a different attitude and we’re going to say ‘Where were the people who should’ve stood up for these things at the time?’”
House Republicans are standing up against this lawless Administration — defending the separation of powers and holding the executive branch accountable to the people it is expected to serve.
Ways and Means Republicans are leading several investigations into the Administration’s unprecedented actions and will not stop until America’s workers, families, taxpayers, and job creators get the answers they deserve.
Specifically, the Committee has:
- Delivered justice to victims of Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) abuse through aggressive oversight and bipartisan legislation packed with taxpayer protections, ensuring small business owners — like Maryland farmer Randy Sowers, who testified before the committee twice — get their wrongly-seized money back from the IRS.
- Protected taxpayer information by investigating the IRS’s security and fraud prevention and privacy policies and procedures, as well as passing several pieces of legislation to protect taxpayers’ identities (ex: H.R. 3832 and H.R. 5053).
- Brought to light the Administration’s illegal use of taxpayer dollars through joint investigations with the Energy and Commerce Committee, by:
- Releasing a comprehensive report detailing the Administration’s unlawful funding of the cost sharing reduction program based on findings from numerous letters, subpoenas, transcribed interviews, and depositions.
- Calling on the Administration to immediately cease the funding of the Basic Health Program using unappropriated taxpayer dollars and submit an appropriation request to Congress, as required by the Constitution.
- Working to halt the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s illegal diversion of $3.5 billion from the Treasury to pay health insurers through the Transitional Reinsurance Program.
Ways and Means will continue to investigate the Administration’s actions and hold Administration officials accountable.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Committee’s oversight efforts.
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