And boy will the docket be full.

“If Republicans win the House this fall, Rep. Darrell Issa will wield the majority’s sharpest investigative tool: the subpoena pen.

“Cabinet officers, assistant secretaries, directors — I will be able to take on everybody that the president hires and relies upon; the people who tell him that everything is fine,” pledges Issa, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in an interview with National Review Online.

For months, Issa, a California Republican, has been delving into allegations of bureaucratic abuse and political foul play, prepping for the committee chairmanship should the chance come. A relentless critic of the Obama administration, he frequently takes to cable news to highlight his growing pile of files. Everything from the alleged job offers made to Democratic candidates by White House emissaries, to the private-sector ties of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has caught his eye.

Prodding Democrats for answers, of course, has brought him both notoriety and enemies. The New York Times, for example, calls him President Obama’s “Annoyer-in-Chief.” Issa shrugs off Democrats’ displeasure. In fact, he says that he enjoys tangling with the administration and its flacks. But subpoena power, he notes, will make a “big difference” between annoying the administration and “holding its feet to the fire.”

“You will get oversight where now you don’t,” Issa observes. “[In the minority,] I try to create public awareness about my questions so that I can try to get at least partial answers. Without press coverage, however, it is hard to get heat onto members. The administration often simply does not respond.” With subpoena power, the stakes change. Republicans, he predicts, “may not have to use it, but when [investigative targets] know that you can, it makes them attempt to give you an answer.”

This of course will be most welcome and Democrats should be very afraid.