I might have made some flippant remarks about Darrell Issa, the ranking member of California's House delegation, if it weren’t for my genuine concern about his revealed capacity to bring chaos, confusion, and a general sense of the arcane to Washington. As the "Head of Oversight,'" it shouldn’t be surprising that he agonizes so over his inability to find “the $700 billion dollars.”
Just prior to the mid-term elections last week, Congressman Issa, at that time the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a guest on the Rush Limbaugh radio program, told Mr. Limbaugh that he considered Democratic President Barack Obama to be “One of the most corrupt Presidents in modern times.” Even young schoolchildren, home for the day, would likely see such commentary as irresponsible at the least. Issa was expressing concern about the President's $700 billion in stimulus spending; “That $700 billion is gone; we have to figure out, one: where it went, and two: how to keep it from going away that way again. The American people cannot afford that!”
Since making those remarks to Limbaugh, owing to the post-election change in majority in the House of Representatives, Californian Issa has become the incoming chairman of The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee; this is a new and different situation. Issa, speaking on ABC Television’s Good Morning America, on Monday, November 8, repeated more than once that he was “caught up in the heat of the campaign!"... “I tried never to make it a personal statement about the president…I am not saying that the President is personally corrupt. But his administration has to change direction particularly after taxpayer money.” Issa is still at a loss to find the $700 billion
In late July of 2010, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved The 2010 Earmark Transparency Act. The act proposed by the President, and lobbied for by the President during his State of the Union address, calls for a publication of "all earmark requests on a single website, before there's a vote, so that the American people can see how their money is being spent", this in Obama’s words. On Wednesday, July 28, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the 2010 Earmark Transparency Act by a vote of 11-5. The legislation then did create an online database that taxpayers could use to sort, search and download earmark requests and approved projects.
Article comments
1 - Sarah Goldston
It is a false attack perpetrated by someone who's agenda obviously is not to show accountability, but rather to show anything they can get their hands on to falsely accuse Obama of wrong doing...it has an "official" name, so it must be true.
2 - John Lake
As they say, If I read it on the internet, it must be true!