Investigating Bush

Since the Democrats regained control of Congress last year, they haven't exactly been taking it to President Bush. They have continued funding for the war in Iraq, rolled over on illegal wiretapping, acquiesced to the administration's ever-broadening bailout of Wall Street and refused to close a tax loophole for hedge-fund billionaires that deprives the treasury of $6 ?billion a year. Even the party's proudest moments have ended in disarray: After forcing Alberto Gonzales to resign as attorney general, Democrats agreed to replace him with Michael Mukasey — despite his refusal to prosecute waterboarding as torture.

Democrats blame their weak showing — which has earned Congress an even lower approval rating than the president — on their slim majority in the Senate. "What am I supposed to say?" says Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "We don't have a working majority. That's just as simple as it gets. We need to take back another eight or nine seats here in the Senate and get a Democratic president to get things on the right course."

There is one Democrat, however, who isn't waiting until the next election to chart a new direction. As chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman has grilled Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about mismanagement in Iraq, slammed the administration for granting immunity to for-profit mercenaries and exposed Bush's Halliburton-style indulgence of big contractors, who now receive a staggering $200 ?billion a year in no-bid deals. In short, Waxman is doing the work the American public expected when they gave Democrats the keys to Congress in 2006. Waxman has even gone so far as to swear off pork-barrel projects in his home district and has called for a moratorium on all such "earmarks" next year.

"There has been no more determined member of Congress in demanding oversight and openness," says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Henry Waxman has insisted upon accountability where there has been none."

Indeed, the House leadership regards Waxman as what Rep. Rahm Emanuel calls the "point of the spear" in the party's effort to forge a bolder, more aggressive brand of Democrat. Because of Waxman, we know for a fact that Valerie Plame had covert status at the CIA when she was outed by Karl Rove and Co. Because of Waxman, we learned that Dick Cheney claimed he could withhold classified documents because the vice president is not "an entity within the executive branch." Because of Waxman, we know that the administration used a twenty-three-year-old college dropout in the NASA press office to censor findings on global warming by NASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen. And because of Waxman, the administration has been forced to begin cleaning up radioactive uranium pilings that have languished on Navajo lands for decades.

Armed with subpoena power and an expansive mandate — "The committee has oversight over anything, anything that government does or might do," says Waxman — the soft-spoken congressman from California has made himself into the most feared Democrat on Capitol Hill. "I've worked both with Henry Waxman and against him," says Sen. Orrin Hatch, a GOP leader. "And all I can say is that it's far better to have him on your side."