Washington – Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi on Thursday recommended creating a House panel to closely examine U.S. spy agencies’ actions and spending, a step toward adopting all the proposals of the anti-terror Sept. 11 commission.
Pelosi, D-Calif., said the panel would “protect the American people with the best possible intelligence, recognizing the role that Congress plays in all of this.”
It also would shake up long- standing power structures in Congress.
The Select Intelligence Oversight Panel would be part of the powerful Appropriations Committee and would draw its membership from that spending committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence.
Through a series of hearings, it would examine the president’s intelligence budget, prepare the classified details to the annual defense-spending bill and conduct oversight of the use of appropriated funds by intelligence agencies.
Pelosi’s proposal does not follow the exact recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission. But it moves closer to the overhaul recommended two years ago when the commission found weaknesses in how Congress monitors the 16 intelligence agencies.
A Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission – former Rep. Timothy Roemer of Indiana – said the change would achieve the commission’s two major goals: forcing spy agencies to disclose more to Congress, which they often have ignored, and linking the expanded oversight to the power of the purse.
Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, who will lead House Republicans next year, was lukewarm about the proposal.
The full House will have to approve Pelosi’s proposal. It was one of six she outlined Thursday as her priorities for the first 100 legislative hours of the new Congress that convenes in January.
The others are ethics and lobbying overhaul; raising the federal minimum wage; cutting interest rates on student loans; making health care more affordable; and cutting subsidies to the oil industry.
