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Congress Has Refused to Use its Power of Oversight
House of Representatives - December 15, 2005

Mr. Speaker, this Congress ought to support Mr. Skeleton's motion because the reason we are here is that the United States Congress has refused to use its power of oversight to look at what we have been doing overseas. Have we had hearings about Abu Ghraib? Have we had hearings about secret prisons in Romania, in Poland, or wherever?

The Republican leadership of the House says we are not going to look. We simply will hold our hands over our eyes and we will not look out there to see what is going on. Unfortunately, there is the rest of the world. There is the Guardian newspaper, there are newspapers in France and Germany and all over the place looking at this information, and it is now worldwide known what we are doing. Yet the Congress walks around here, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

This Congress has abrogated, you have given up your responsibility of oversight. Mr. Skelton brings out a simple amendment that says, let's follow the Senate, which has gotten up on their hind legs and said, let's have some oversight in what we're doing, and suddenly you guys object.

It is clear what you don't want people to know. You don't want the people to know what went on in the Vice President's office or in the White House or what was going on when you let the Attorney General of the United States say that torture in certain circumstances is probably all right, man, you have opened the door to disrepute.