Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee HSGAC

The committee began in 1921 as the Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, became Government Operations in 1952 and Governmental Affairs in 1977, and took its current name in 2005 after it gained jurisdiction over the new Department of Homeland Security. It is the Senate counterpart to the House Oversight Committee, overseeing the efficiency and organization of the entire federal government.

Its jurisdiction covers DHS, the federal workforce and Office of Personnel Management, government reorganization, federal procurement, the Postal Service, the census, and the District of Columbia. It processes nominations for DHS, OPM, OMB, GSA, and inspectors general. Its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, created in 1948, has wide authority to investigate fraud, waste, and abuse in government and the private sector. Senator Joseph McCarthy chaired the subcommittee in 1953 and 1954 and used it for his anti-communist investigations, culminating in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings.

In recent decades the subcommittee has issued influential bipartisan reports on offshore tax avoidance, bank money laundering, and the opioid industry. The full committee wrote the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the intelligence reforms of 2004. In the 119th Congress it is chaired by Rand Paul, with Gary Peters as ranking member.