On the recordFebruary 4, 2010
I have listened again to my friend, and he is my friend. We worked together on a lot of issues, and we will continue to work together on issues. I have listened to Senator Enzi's comments, and I was thinking, is there anything new here? We have heard all this before, on and on and again. No matter how many times you repeat it, it just doesn't seem to hold much water. I grant Ms. Smith made two mistakes in her testimony, two mistakes when she appeared before the committee--which she corrected. One of those had to do with the origins of the program. When she was asked about this, she thought at that time that the program really had kind of originated among her staff. What she found out was that some of her staff had been talking to outside groups about this. The idea seemed to come from just a meeting of different people, but both within her agency and outside, so Ms. Smith corrected that. That is hardly a cause for her not assuming this position. Again, why would she want to mislead the committee on that when there was nothing wrong with it? So the idea came from an outside group--so what? It doesn't make any difference. She was just trying to answer honestly where she thought the idea had originated within her agency. So, again, she corrected that, as we let people do. The second one had to do with the expansion of the program. I read the testimony, I read the record more than once on that. She has answered that in writing back.…
