Tim Ryan: “I appreciate that. And it is an honor for me to be in the Appropriations Committee, and my friend on the Ways and Means…”

“I appreciate that. And it is an honor for me to be in the Appropriations Committee, and my friend on the Ways and Means Committee provides the ways and the means for us to get the job done. One of the issues that we have talked about today a little bit is what the Democrats have been doing in Congress since we got here a couple of months ago. And I think it is very important, as we see all of the news stories about Walter Reed, as we see the news stories about the Attorneys General, we see the news stories about what is going on in Iraq, a year ago or 2 years ago, those stories wouldn't have even been possible because the threat of oversight hearings that Speaker Pelosi and the Chairs of our various committees have been executing is the exact balance of power that we were talking about prior to the elections last year. And the American people, very wisely, thought it was time for there to be some oversight. But I must say, Mr. Meek and Mr. Speaker, that all of the thoughts that we had about what was going on in a lot of these various agencies we thought were bad, but we didn't know they were this bad. And I don't think anybody would have said the level of pressure, for example, in the Attorneys General situation, the level of incompetence and neglect at Walter Reed is just absolutely shocking. And we knew about it with the war. We saw the lack of execution in the war. We saw it in Katrina.”