Bob Wise: “when I came on the floor and heard some previous statements about lack of cooperation from the Democrats in…”

“when I came on the floor and heard some previous statements about lack of cooperation from the Democrats in investigations, I have to respond. I am a member of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and I have to say that this is a perfect example of where taxpayer money has been wasted, and it has been wasted, Mr. Speaker, because the majority party, the Republican Party, would refuse to conduct investigations in a bipartisan manner. Let me give my colleagues some examples: If my colleagues recall, this was to be an election reform and to be looking at many of the areas of concern, particularly coming out of the 1996 elections. Well, Democrats raised a lot of soft money then, and a lot, most, of the allegations deal with soft money. What is never pointed out is Republicans raised more soft money, and so we said let us make it fair because there are allegations about Republicans just as there are allegations about Democrats. Five hundred subpoenas were issued almost unilaterally by the chairman of the committee, which I might add is an unprecedented exercise of that authority, never done before, 500 subpoenas of which almost all, and I believe there may have been 12 that went to Republican targets, but almost all went to Democratic targets. We then asked, ``Well, why don't we at least have bipartisanship in voting for subpoenas, which has always been the practice?'' No, could not do that, had to be done by the chairman. Talk about delay.…”