{"id":22238,"date":"2014-03-13T16:31:15","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T20:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22238"},"modified":"2014-03-13T16:31:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T20:31:15","slug":"the-new-definition-of-senate-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22238","title":{"rendered":"The New Definition Of Senate Oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the Washington Examiner<\/a> posted a story about an exchange between\u00a0HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin<\/a> and ranking Sen. Lamar Alexander<\/a> at a Senate Hearing.<\/p>\n

Senator Alexander asked Labor Secretary<\/a> Thomas Perez<\/a>\u00a0 if he believes that the Congressional Budget Office<\/a> (CBO) is qualified to judge the impact of raising the minimum wage<\/a>. The CBO has stated that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Perez did not directly answer the question.<\/p>\n

The article reports what happened next:<\/p>\n

Harkin said that Perez can \u201canswer as he wants to answer, not as you direct him to answer. You can\u2019t force him to say one thing or another. If he wants to answer that question, then he can answer that question.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander: \u201cSo a senator is not entitled to a yes-or-no answer to a specific question?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harkin: \u201cThe senator is entitled to ask a question, and the secretary can give the answer as he sees fit.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander: \u201cThat\u2019s not much congressional oversight in my book.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harkin: \u201cWell, it\u2019s being respectful of people who want to respond in the way that they feel is best suited to answering the question.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexander: \u201cWell then we might as well not ask questions if we can’t get answers.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

This exchange depicts where we are in Washington. Congress<\/a> has given up so much power that it has lost its oversight of the executive branch of government<\/a>. It will be interesting to see if the minimum wage gets raised by an executive order. Then we will see if there are enough people in Congress who respect the Constitution to demand that it be followed. America<\/a> has serious economic issues–this is not the time to play political games with people’s lives.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted a story about an exchange between\u00a0HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin and ranking Sen. Lamar Alexander at a Senate Hearing. Senator Alexander asked Labor Secretary Thomas Perez\u00a0 if he believes that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[580,6358,6164,5242,1042,7181,285,430],"class_list":["post-22238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-congressional-budget-office","tag-lamar-alexander","tag-minimum-wage","tag-perez","tag-thomas-perez","tag-tom-harkin","tag-united-states","tag-washington-examiner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22239,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22238\/revisions\/22239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}