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Despite growing pressure from colleagues to mount an internal challenge
for the Oversight Committee gavel, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has reiterated
to House Democratic leaders his decision to avoid running against his elder on
the committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.). Leadership sources said Cummings made his views known — and final — in
brief discussions with senior House Democrats on Tuesday morning.
In not bowing to suggestions from within Democratic circles that he
should run, Cummings’s decision essentially paves the way for Towns to receive
the unanimous recommendation of the Steering and Policy Committee when it meets
— presumably in December — to consider the vacant top post on the Oversight and
Government Reform Committee.
Towns, a Congressional Black Caucus colleague of Cummings's and the
next in line in seniority on the Oversight Committee behind the departing
chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), continued to roll out supporters behind his
bid for the Oversight gavel.
He announced an additional letter of support on Tuesday from two
Democrats just elected to their second terms: Rep. Peter Welch (Vt.), the
lowest-ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Brad Ellsworth
(Ind.).
“As chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization
and Procurement, Ed Towns took an active interest in helping us move forward on
our legislative ideas for making government more efficient,” Welch and
Ellsworth wrote. “His work in guiding our bills through the legislative process
— through hearings, his subcommittee, the full committee and the floor — was
invaluable in achieving passage of the bills we developed as freshmen. We
believe that as full committee chairman, Ed Towns will be just as open to ideas
and bills from all parts of the Democratic Caucus, including newer members.”
Cummings maintained publicly all along that, out of respect for the
seniority system, he would not challenge Towns.
But aides close to leadership discussions about the future of the
Oversight Committee said that top Democrats would have supported a Cummings
challenge to Towns, even in the aftermath of Waxman’s painful coup over
longtime Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), which has many
rank-and-file and influential Democrats uneasy about the future of the
traditionally seniority-based caucus system.
Cummings was an active supporter of Waxman’s challenge to Dingell and
worked closely with the former Oversight chairman in the run-up to his
successful bid for the Energy and Commerce chairmanship. Towns backed Dingell,
and even refused to speculate on the future of the Oversight panel until the
entire caucus voted to replace Dingell with Waxman.
If Towns is chosen to lead the full committee, he will leave behind the
helm of the Government Management, Organization and Procurement subcommittee.
Outgoing ranking Republican Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) has said Democrats would be
wise to use the committee to focus more on government reform than strictly on
oversight of the executive branch in the 111th Congress, and added that the
likely incoming ranking member, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), shares that view.
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