House Oversight passes executive reorganization bill as GOP blocks data privacy amendment
A Republican-backed bill to reorganize the federal government and grant the executive branch more power passed out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, while a Democratic effort to protect sensitive data was blocked.
The Reorganizing Government Act of 2025 (H.R. 1295) from Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. seeks to give the president reorganizational authorities that would include the ability to amend rules, regulations and requirements to decrease cost and eliminate operations that do not serve the public.
Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, offered an amendment that would have required the president’s reorganization plan to include a list of executive databases that “contain personal and private information of American citizens that DOGE has accessed” and prohibit employees of the Elon Musk-led group and its partners from accessing this information. The amendment was struck down in a vote.
“I think we should all agree, no president, no bureaucrat and no unelected billionaire should have free rein over our American citizens’ private information,” Brown said during the markup. “Let’s protect the American people, not strip them of their rights and safeguards.”
Brown said it remains unclear the degree to which DOGE members accessed the private information of Americans.
“And when we attempted to subpoena Mr. Musk and clarify the work that they’ve been doing in this newly created department, we were rejected by our Republican colleagues,” she added.
Ranking member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., gave Brown’s amendment his endorsement and said that “privacy is a key value in America. We don’t want people accessing our private data and using it for whatever purpose they may decide to use it for.”
Comer called Brown’s amendment “another attempt by committee Democrats to misconstrue what this bill does and use this markup to rant about the Trump administration’s work to eliminate Washington waste and reform the unchecked federal bureaucracy.”
Comer defended the bill, saying the legislation was simply an allowance of the current administration to reorganize the federal government, in a similar way to former President Barack Obama, who requested that Congress renew and revise the same reorganization authority during his presidency.
“This authority is not, and let me repeat, is not some new, abusive or unprecedented power as the Democrats would like us all to believe,” Comer said. “A reorganization plan will only go into effect if Congress approves it, thus preserving our role in rightsizing the federal government.”
