Sunday shows: 112th battles begin

With Republicans poised to take over the House on Wednesday, the Sunday political shows will focus this week on the key figures — and the most prominent partisan battles — of the 112th Congress.

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the Republicans made enormous gains in the midterm elections, picking up 63 seats and reclaiming the House majority after just four years under Democratic control.

{mosads}But GOP leaders have also been cautious not to interpret the voters’ message as a Republican mandate. Rather, they’re vowing to use their new power to cut deficit spending by slashing federal programs — an idea anathema to many Democrats wary that such cuts would only exacerbate the nation’s lingering jobs crisis.

The newly empowered House Republicans are also threatening to revisit some of the Democrats’ most significant and contentious legislative successes — particularly the new healthcare reform law. That bill passed in March without the support of a single Republican in either chamber. GOP leaders, who consider the reform bill a government takeover of the healthcare system, want to repeal it in full and replace it with more market-based reforms.

The ideological differences foreshadow a showdown next year between the GOP-controlled House and the White House and Senate, which remain under control of the Democrats. It’s a clash that’s caused many of Washington’s prognosticators to predict a kind of legislative stalemate over the next two years, with each party catering to its base in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections, but with few significant legislative victories for either side.

Against that backdrop, House leaders from both parties will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday to lay out their strategies and goals in the 112th Congress. Representing the Democrats will be Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Anthony Weiner (N.Y.), while Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — as well as Rep.-elect Mike Kelly (Penn.) — will be standing up for the Republicans.

Among the incoming GOP chairmen vowing to take on the Obama administration next year, few will be more watched than Issa, who will head the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The California Republican says he wants to stage multiple hearings each week in order to investigate a vast array of White House initiatives — everything from stimulus spending to a newly empowered Food and Drug Administration.

Issa will also appear on CNN’s “State of the Union” as the lone Republican opposite Democratic Reps. Steve Israel (N.Y.), Elijah Cummings (Md.) and Jason Altmire (Pa.), as well as Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. All eyes will be on any exchanges between Issa and Cummings, who, as ranking member of the House Oversight panel, will be the Democrats’ first line of defense against the scores of investigations Issa is promising.

For the hat-trick, Issa will also appear on “Fox News Sunday,” joining GOP Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.), who’s poised to take over the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Fox will also host two incoming House Republicans — Mike Lee (Utah) and Allen West (Fla.) — two Tea Party-backed freshmen whose hard line against deficit spending could prove as much a thorn to GOP leaders as to Democrats hoping to fund the government next year.

Turning to the Senate, NBC’s “Meet the Press” will host Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was among the most vocal critics of the Democrats’ successful lame-duck efforts to enact a nuclear treaty with Russia and repeal the Pentagon’s long-standing ban on gays serving openly in the military. Sen.-elect Pat Toomey, the Republican who defeated former Rep. Joe Sestak (D) in Pennsylvania, will also appear.

Moving away from Congress, ABC’s “This Week” will feature Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, as well as actor George Clooney, who will be promoting efforts to end genocide in advance of a referendum next week to split Sudan in two.