OMB POLICY STATEMENTS
Possible Showdown on Congressional Oversight
Those up-and-down negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner on a debt-ceiling agreement aren't the only drama unfolding in the nation's capital. Monday morning, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., chairman of that panel's oversight subcommittee, will learn if Obama's senior appointees in the Office of Management and Budget are blinking or digging in for a pitched battle. The immediate issue is the 9 a.m. Monday deadline that Upton and Stearns gave OMB to comply with a document subpoena issued last week. Based on OMB's actions since March, when Upton and Stearns first requested documents concerning a $535 million Department of Energy economic stimulus loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc., odds are Obama's appointees will cough up just enough documents to look as if they are complying. But chances are odds-on that close examination will reveal they are still holding something back.