[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 10720]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         REGARDING H. RES. 711

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EARL BLUMENAUER

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 28, 2012

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today, I voted against the House 
Privileged Resolution holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt 
of Congress. Never in the 225 years of the House has there been a vote 
to hold any Cabinet member in contempt, and I will never vote to 
support such partisan legislation that's nothing short of a race to the 
bottom for this House.
  There are serious questions that remain to be answered about the 
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) program, infamously 
know as ``Fast and Furious,'' started in 2005 under the Bush 
administration. The Department of Justice is in the midst of such an 
investigation, but today's vote will do nothing to further that 
inquiry, and will instead slow and muddle the process.
  The charges by Chairman Issa of a conspiratorial effort by the Obama 
administration to strengthen gun control laws--are completely 
unsubstantiated and laughable on their face. When that became apparent, 
the Chairman turned to blatant political tactics, culminating in a 
Contempt of Congress resolution that was rushed to the floor.
  The Republicans and the National Rifle Association have created a web 
of constraints that make it almost impossible to restrict these 
dangerous practices that prompted the program in the first place.
  Fast and Furious was a flawed operation. Those flaws, however, 
parallel the biased, politicized investigation run by House Oversight & 
Investigations Committee Republicans. During the Committee's 16-month 
investigation, they refused all Democratic requests for witnesses and 
hearings. The investigation was closed to the public.
  The Republican refusal to even allow those directly involved with the 
Fast & Furious program to testify before the Oversight Committee 
portrays their political motivations, not the facts, nor the thousands 
of innocent civilians in Mexico and on the border who have lost their 
lives from heavily-armed drug cartels.
  Attorney General Holder testified before the Committee nine times. 
The Department of Justice provided over 700 thousand documents to the 
House Oversight & Investigations Committee. Despite this broad 
cooperation, my Republican colleagues kept moving the goal posts, 
making it impossible to meet their demands. There was no end in sight. 
President Obama's decision to assert executive privilege was a well-
reasoned decision to stop playing the Republicans' political game.
  I believe deeply in the fundamental responsibility of Congress to 
provide oversight and accountability for the executive branch. We only 
weaken that authority by engaging in this partisan stunt. Congress and 
the American people deserve better. We should reject this effort and do 
our job to find out what really happened.

                          ____________________