Several top Democrats are pouncing on Paul Ryan’s promise of “wiping the slate clean” with demands that the new House speaker disband the Republicans’ special investigation into Planned Parenthood.



The calls started immediately after Ryan’s election as speaker with an open letter from Representative Louise Slaughter. Slaughter, a Democrat from New York, said special investigations into Planned Parenthood and Benghazi “wasted taxpayer money to inappropriately investigate pet political causes”.

On Monday, other ranking Democrats joined her demand that Ryan abandon the special committee formed to investigate claims, made in heavily edited sting videos, that Planned Parenthood violated federal law.

“If Speaker Ryan is serious about wanting to protect taxpayers’ hard-earned money and conduct serious business in the House, he has no choice but to disband this wasteful and partisan subcommittee,” said Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House energy and commerce committee, which is overseeing the special investigation into Planned Parenthood.

Appearing Sunday on Meet the Press, Ryan vowed to be realistic about Republicans’ odds of defunding Planned Parenthood. Democrats are able to filibuster most attempts and Barack Obama has promised to veto any measure that strips the group’s funding. In the states, repeated efforts to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood have been rejected by federal courts.



“I think we need to be very clear about what we can and cannot achieve and not set expectations that we know we can’t reach given the constraints of the constitution,” Ryan told CNN.

At the same time, he showed no signs of letting up on existing investigations. “The special committee on Planned Parenthood, I think, should be in the driver’s seat overseeing this process,” he said.

Slaughter called her letter a test of how serious Ryan is about breaking with former speaker John Boehner’s leadership style, which often involved a struggle to placate far-right members of his party.

“The House is broken,” Ryan said in remarks to the chamber shortly after he was chosen as its 54th speaker. “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them. And I am not interested in laying blame. We are wiping the slate clean. Neither the members nor the people are satisfied with how things are going. We need to make some changes, starting with how the House does business.”

Hearing Ryan’s speech, Slaughter said: “We thought this was a chance for a sort of new start – and to see if he really meant what he said.”

Representative Gene Greene, of Texas, said: “We already have existing committees to deal with Planned Parenthood, and frankly, Beghazi, too.” Greene is the ranking Democrat on the House energy and commerce health subcommittee, where Republicans are crafting two measures that would give states wide authority to restrict Medicaid payments to abortion providers.

Saying he supports Slaughter’s demands to disband both select committees, Greene added: “My worry now is whether Democrats are in the majority or Republicans are in the majority, we will continue to see both sides using special select committees for political purposes.”

Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who was a staunch advocate of Planned Parenthood in a hearing before the oversight and government reform committee, where he is the senior Democrat, asked Ryan to relegate the Planned Parenthood special committee and others to “the dustbin of history”.



“Speaker Ryan now has an historic opportunity to shed Speaker Boehner’s legacy of trying – and failing – to appease radicals in his own party that have been driving the GOP towards extremism,” Cummings said. “These are all remnants of Speaker Boehner’s legacy – not Speaker Ryan’s.”

The select committee is Republicans’ response to a series of sting videos accusing Planned Parenthood executives of flaunting federal laws, such as a ban on the sale of fetal tissue. A little-known anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress, began leaking the videos this summer. Planned Parenthood has denied the allegations in the videos and numerous investigations of the group’s affiliates in conservative states have failed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing.

Formed in early October, the select panel brought the total number of Planned Parenthood investigations in the House and Senate to five. Democrats quickly accused Republicans of overkill. Other committees have already held numerous combative hearings and fueled repeated House votes to strip Planned Parenthood of some half a billion dollars in federal funding.

Republicans on the education and workforce committee, which is not formally investigating the group, nevertheless grilled health secretary Sylvia Burwell about the sting videos in a budgetary hearing on 28 July.

Ryan’s office did not reply to requests for comment.

Slaughter called Ryan’s remarks on Meet the Press hypocritical. “We sent the letter to Paul to see if he really meant it that he was going to be new and different,” she said. “I’m beginning to think we’ll see more of the same.”