Byron Dorgan: “that gives me some hope, and I hope as a result of that the Senator would support my amendment as well. The fact is, we…”

“that gives me some hope, and I hope as a result of that the Senator would support my amendment as well. The fact is, we have not had many oversight hearings. We have now been in this conflict for several years, and a substantial amount of money has been spent. A very substantial amount of it has been wasted, regrettably. But I think anything that any committee or subcommittee does to shine a spotlight on this makes some sense. I must say, however, as my colleague knows, there is substantial brushback from the administration. They do not want anything to do with this. And I understand why. But the fact is, what happened here was wrong. A top contracting official gets demoted because she blows the whistle on bad practices, and the taxpayer takes a bath to the tune, I think, of billions of dollars. So whatever subcommittee or committee wants to dig into this, I think that would be great, and I certainly will commend my colleague if he convenes these hearings. But I would say this: I think there are substantial pressures on many of our committees and subcommittees by the administration not to move too far. We had an example of that on the issue of intelligence recently, and I won't explore that more, but there has been a lot of foot dragging in a lot of areas. The point of this on behalf of myself, Senator Durbin, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Boxer, and others, the point of it is to establish what we know works, and what we know works is the Truman committee.…”