The new Democratic House leadership sure does like Peter Welch.

First, the freshman Congressman was given a seat on the powerful House Rules Committee. Now he's been been assigned to a second committee, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Under Republican control, the committee has been mostly an investigative wall flower during the Bush hears. As Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., put it in an interview with the Washington Post in 2004, "Our party controls the levers of government. We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."

That's going to change with Waxman at the controls. In the past, he's used his position on the committee to raise concerns about global warming. Waxman says now that he's chair of the committee, he plans to have the panel aggressively investigate waste, fraud and abuse of government funds in connection with homeland security, Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That's headline material, and while it's not the same as "bringing home the bacon" for Vermont, knowing that Welch is digging deeply into such matters is something that will warm the hearts of many in blue-state Vermont.

In Welch's press release announcing the committee assignment, he quotes what Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to say about putting Welch on Waxman's panel.

"Peter Welch is an experienced and skilled legislator who brings to Congress a record of effectiveness in achieving legislative reforms," Pelosi said. " We have an ambitious agenda for taking our nation in a New Direction and having a leader like Congressman Welch on this committee charged with government reform will help guide that change. Vermonters can be proud that Peter Welch is representing their interests on these two influential committees."

No matter what your political views are, Welch is off to a heck of a start as far as freshman members of Congress are concerned.

-- Sam Hemingway