"Oversight" Is the Committee's First Name The new Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans hearings next month on waste, fraud and abuse in contracting. One of Chairman Henry Waxman’s first moves was to restore the word “oversight” to the committee’s name. Republicans had dropped the term when they held a majority in the House. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Jan. 7, the California Democrat said the hearings, beginning Feb. 5, will concentrate on contracting in Iraq and in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, but won’t stop there. “It seems to me that our top priority as the chief investigative and oversight committee is to make sure taxpayer funds are not being wasted, that there is no fraud and abuse,” he said. In meetings with Bush administration officials, he told the newspaper Federal Times, “I expressed my concern that a lot of the contracting mistakes seem to happen over and over again — monopoly contracts, no-bid contracts. What we saw in Iraq is also what we saw in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.” Waxman said audits by inspectors general and the Government Accountability Office have examined only a small fraction of Iraq contracts, but their findings so far have been “very, very frightening.” He has been a vocal critic of the large, sole-source contracts awarded for work in Iraq and in the Katrina recovery.