Exciting or not, LaTurner is in the middle of it

Jan. 26—What do you get when you put U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the same committee room?

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, in an interview, told the news site Axios that it's the "most exciting committee" in congressional history.

That may be in the eye of the beholder, but a Northeast Kansas congressman finds himself in the eye of the storm as the 118th Congress gets down to work.

"I think it's exciting to be able to get to the bottom of what the administration is up to in terms of where the money is spent and how they're implementing federal law and policy," said U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, who represents the 2nd District in Kansas, which includes the majority of the eastern part of the state.

LaTurner, who won a second term in November, was appointed to two committees that promise to command plenty of attention in the 24-hour news cycle. He has a seat on the Appropriations Committee at a time when House Republicans and the White House are locking horns over an extension of the federal debt limit.

"We want to work in a bipartisan way, but common sense tells us that when the Biden Administration spent over $10 trillion in the last two years, we've got to rein in federal spending," LaTurner said.

In addition, LaTurner serves on the Oversight and Accountability Committee that Republicans will use to delve into issues that are even more partisan than federal spending priorities, like the origins of COVID or the labyrinthine business dealings of Hunter Biden.

Both parties tend to use the Oversight Committee to advance a certain agenda, with Democrats holding hearings on Big Pharma and climate change when they held a majority. Comer, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Get ready for Republican oversight," vows to examine the border and fentanyl crisis, wasteful pandemic-relief spending, the administration's energy policies, the Wuhan lab-leak theory and the president's son.

This week, the committee contacted an art dealer named Georges Bergès for more information on the sale of Hunter Biden's artwork to anonymous foreign sources. Some of the art was priced at $225,000.

LaTurner said the Oversight Committee has always had a role in keeping the government accountable.

"They deserve honest and transparent government," he said. "The Oversight Committee is going to give that over the next two years."

Not everyone shares that viewpoint. Gordon Myers, the Democratic committee chairman in Atchison County, Kansas, was asked if he thought the Oversight Committee could be described as exciting. He just chuckled.

Myers, whose county is in LaTurner's district, said the GOP's narrow majority after the general election should serve as a warning that voters would like less grandstanding and more governing.

"It's not a good use of lawmakers' time," he said. "It's just politics. With victory comes the spoils. They get to make those statements."

Greg Kozol can be reached at greg.kozol@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowKozol.