Recently, three key investigative committees of the House of Representatives—the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Energy and Commerce Committee—each adopted their respective committee’s oversight plan for the new Congress, offering a window into the committees’ investigative priorities for the next two years. The newly adopted oversight plans provide insights into the companies and industries most likely to draw congressional scrutiny from these three significant committees.
Under clause 2(d) of Rule X of the House, each authorizing committee is required to adopt and submit an oversight plan to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on House Administration by March 1 after the start of a new Congress. The Oversight and Government Reform Committee collects the individual oversight plans and later publishes a comprehensive collection by April 15.
With some exceptions, the current oversight plans described below align with the plans adopted by these committees in the last Congress, and the Republican Members of the committees rebuffed the Democratic Members’ efforts to expand the plans to encompass oversight of the new Trump Administration. During a series of contentious markups, the committees rejected various amendments that would have expanded the scope of the oversight plans to include reviews of the Trump Administration directives, federal funding freezes, the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency, and other topics. As a result, the oversight plans tend to focus on private sector investigations, suggesting that investigations of private sector interests may take an outsized role in these committees’ oversight activities in the current Congress.
Below we highlight those elements of the committees’ oversight plans that are mostly likely to have implications for private sector entities. The plans are especially relevant to clients in industries including energy and environment, aerospace and defense, communications, technology, artificial intelligence, higher education, and pharmaceuticals.