Democrats lock Republicans out of committee room
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.
Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.
News video of dozens of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee fleeing out a back door to avoid having to vote on whether to issue a subpoena for documents from the Countrywide Mortgage VIP program
The Following Statement is from Darrell Issa
I had hoped to raise the Countrywide issue again during Committee meetings this week. But Democrats have locked us out – literally. They changed the locks on the doors so Republicans can’t access the Committee hearing room without first getting permission from Democrats. And they admitted it was an act of retaliation! News reports in the Wall Street Journal, Roll Call, Politico, and The Hill describe the Democrat Committee Chairman, himself a Countrywide VIP, as “seething” at the release of the video of Democrats fleeing the vote and explaining that the lockout was ordered because Republicans “don’t know how to behave.”
I expected Democrats to do their best to defeat my efforts to subpoena the Countrywide VIP documents. For months they have refused my requests for an investigation into the scope of Countrywide’s influence buying. The American people deserve to know the extent to which policymakers and mortgage industry regulators where corrupted by Countrywide’s effort. You deserve the full truth, not a lockout and a cover-up.
I have to admit to you, I didn’t expect such a brazen act. One so offensive to our democratic institutions and that so thoroughly begs the questions – what are they covering up? Who are they protecting?
I can’t answer those questions for you today. But I can commit to you – I won’t be deterred by changed locks or bullying from the Democrat majority. I am going to raise the question again, and again, and again until we get answers.
