'Nothing else to brag about': Boebert accused of wasting taxpayers' money with 'showboating'
Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert is wasting taxpayers’ money by “showboating” about the number of committee hearings the House GOP is holding, according to experts who spoke to Newsweek.
The member of Congress has boasted that her party has “set a new record for the amount of hearings in a single day,” and claimed no group has “worked harder to get this country back on track,” the news site reported.
But experts said the focus on the number of meetings is merely a cover for not having achieved anything of real worth.
"It's no surprise that they are focusing on their committee investigations and hearings because they have very little to show in terms of legislative accomplishments,” David A. Bateman, a politics expert at Cornell University, told Newsweek.
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"This is a period of divided government and high polarization. Still, House Republicans are having a hard time agreeing on and passing their own legislative priorities, let alone getting these passed through the Senate or signed into law by the president.
"When you've got a poor record in getting bills enacted into law, and a poor performance in passing legislation through the chamber you control, you're going to emphasize the activities of committees, because what else is there to focus on? Hearings can be important, but they can also be opportunities for member showboating," Bateman continued.
"And the reason the House GOP wants to brag about their hearings is because they have almost nothing else to brag about."
Among the committee hearings Boebert references are investigations into the Biden administration and his family's business dealings, Jim Jordan’s look at the federal government’s supposed weaponization against conservatives, and a look at the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Several Republicans are reportedly frustrated at the lack of progress they’ve made.
Newsweek reported that millions of dollars of taxpayers' money are spent on the committees – between January 2021 and January 2023, $301.2 million dollars went to them, it said.
Thomas Gift, the head of the Center on U.S. Politics at University College London, told Newsweek: "The main point to say is that the number of hearings isn't an indicator of effectiveness, and it's a mistake to conflate the two.
"Ultimately, what we should care about is the quality of legislative outputs, not inputs – the results of which are judged by voters. Lots of hearings geared toward the wrong issues can be, at best, distracting, and, at worst, counterproductive."
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