House Oversight Committee Pretends to Care about Revolving Door Cronyism at Dept. of Energy

I’m sure they’ll fix this right away.

House investigators are asking questions about former Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman’s past dealings with Centrus Energy Corp., the nuclear enrichment company that just hired Poneman as CEO after getting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of federal aid during his time at the Energy Department.

Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released letters Tuesday night in which they demanded that the department and Centrus turn over five years’ worth of documents, including communications between Poneman and Centrus and any discussions of potential job opportunities at the company, formerly known as USEC.

Hey, isn’t this why people get involved with government jobs in the first place? Yes, the cronyism here is awful, but the joke is that this guy wouldn’t be getting a second look if he had just taken an energy lobbying job with the same salary.

This might surprise you, but I think THE FEDERAL AID IS THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM.

The less taxpayer money the political class can dole out, the fewer opportunities for the Crony Express to ride. This is the reason I am so bitterly opposed to electing big government “compassionate” Republicans. They’re doing just as much damage, just doing it more slowly than their Democrat counterparts. Unless conservatives find a way to elect people who will fight the expansion of the size and scope of the federal behemoth, the Republic has a pretty short shelf life.