U.S. Rep. DeGette named chair of investigations panel

Colorado Democrat gains direct oversight of HHS, EPA, other major federal agencies

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, was named chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations panel.

The move Jan. 15 move gives the Colorado Democrat considerable sway to influence future policy decisions related to health care and the environment as her party once again takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

As chair of the panel, DeGette will have direct oversight authority and the power to investigate the actions of several prominent federal agencies that fall under the broader committee's jurisdiction, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration and the Department of Energy.

"I can think of no other time in our nation's history that keeping a close watch on these agencies was so important," DeGette said in a news release. "As chair of Energy and Commerce's oversight and investigation panel, my top priority is to make sure that science and widely accepted scientific facts are once again used as the basis for any and all of the important decisions that these agencies make every day. No longer are we going to allow these agencies to ignore, among other things, the very real effects of climate change or base their decisions on hyper-partisan rhetoric, instead of well-established scientific facts."

DeGette, Colorado's most senior member of Congress now in her 12th term, said finding ways to combat climate change and make health care more affordable for all Americans will be two of the panel's top priorities in the months ahead.

The first issue the panel plans to tackle, according to DeGette, is the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their families at the border. The federal agency charged with caring for any undocumented children taken from their families at the border is HHS, one of the agencies now under DeGette's purview.

In addition to being named chair of the oversight and investigations panel, DeGette was also named a senior member on the committee's panel on telecommunications and its subcommittee on the environment and climate change.