Rick Allen: “The power, the investigatory power of this House, is so broad, so powerful, so important that it has got to be handled…”

“The power, the investigatory power of this House, is so broad, so powerful, so important that it has got to be handled carefully. It has got to be handled in a way that does not deteriorate into partisan bickering. As those of my colleagues who are on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight with me understand, we continue to slide down. And I think that the only way to pull this investigation back, to get it on track and bring it to a sensible conclusion is to make a change in leadership; and I say that with regret. But it seems to me that it is very important for the health of our democracy and for our ability to function in this House. This investigation is out of control. On the one hand, it seems no longer to respect people's rights of privacy; on the other, it seems to be wasting taxpayers' money. I think that the fundamental flaw, the thing that went wrong from the beginning, was the sense that it could be run by one party against the other. Whatever the numbers are, whether we look at the numbers of documents subpoenaed, the number of witnesses deposed or the targets of the document requests that have been issued by subpoena, they are 98 percent to 99 percent to Democratic targets. We know that both sides have violated the campaign laws. Both sides should be investigated in an efficient, responsible way.…”