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| By Alexander Ward, Matt Berg and Lawrence Ukenye |
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Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the incoming chair of the House Select China Committee, was unable to meet Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, in a SCIF Wednesday because he’s not yet officially a member of Congress. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images |
With help from Lee Hudson, Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman and Lara Seligman As entertaining as the House speaker fight is, the prolonged process has and could continue to impact U.S. national security oversight. Rep. MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.), the incoming chair of the House Select China Committee, was unable to meet Gen. MARK MILLEY , the Joint Chiefs chair, in a SCIF Wednesday because he’s not yet officially a member of Congress. Yes, he’s a returning representative, but the House isn’t officially in place as the KEVIN McCARTHY battle rages, which means Gallagher doesn’t have the requisite permission to see or discuss classified materials. “Technically, I don't have a clearance," he told reporters yesterday. Rep. BRAD WENSTRUP (R-Ohio), who was on the House Intel Committee in the last Congress, lamented that "the secure facility that we work in every day when we're here, we can't go in there right now...We're in there all the time. And right now, we can't be in there at all." All of this and more has the presumptive chairs of the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs panels quite worried. “The Biden administration is going unchecked and there is no oversight of the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, or the intelligence community,” Reps. MIKE TURNER (R-Ohio), MIKE ROGERS (R-Ala.) and MICHAEL McCAUL (R-Texas) said in a joint statement. Staffers at government agencies can still brief some staffers, but for now, those staffers can’t brief their bosses on classified information. JONATHAN LORD, who worked on the House Armed Services Committee, told NatSec Daily that further delays could imperil the long process toward the next National Defense Authorization Act. HASC needs to conduct a dozen posture hearings and a chairman’s mark before the summer, receive briefings on the Pentagon’s budget justification and review hundreds of amendments before the markup. If much of this work isn’t done before the president’s budget drops early this year, “the committee would likely be unable to complete the process until significantly later in the calendar year,” Lord said. “A delay absolutely makes it harder for the committee to get its work done or do sufficient, regular oversight of DoD activities.” Of course, Lord’s scenario presumes the speaker-vote tumult lasts weeks, not days. Some experts say that a few day’s delay won’t be much of a problem. There are also some broader issues at play. For one, the 20 or so House Republicans blocking McCarthy say his support for continued assistance to Ukraine is a major reason for their opposition. “Today the House didn’t organize. Biggest loser: Zelensky. Biggest winner: US Taxpayers,” Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) tweeted Tuesday. It’s possible that McCarthy might promise hard-right wingers some reductions in military and economic aid to Kyiv in exchange for the speakership. And then there’s what the congressional dysfunction looks like abroad. “[F]or US allies like Canada and others, the paralysis, instability and unpredictability this represents is a potentially vital threat,” tweeted THOMAS JUNEAU, a professor at the University of Ottawa. “Big worries for us up here.” A Western diplomat called what’s happening a “shit show,” telling CNN’s NATASHA BERTRAND that “honest to God this is what we wrote yesterday” in a cable back to their capital. |