Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California berated the Obama administration Thursday for its repeated dismissals of congressional investigations into the IRS, the 2012 Benghazi embassy attacks, and the Department of Justice’s Fast & Furious program as “phony scandals.”
Speaking at a meeting of the House Republican Study Committee, Issa stressed the need for vigilance in the ongoing investigations, and lambasted the Obama White House for its blasé attitude toward the continuing revelations. President Obama, White House press secretary Jay Carney, and numerous Democratic members of Congress have labelled the events “phony scandals” in the last year.
“We will follow the facts, and we will conduct investigations,” Issa promised. “If the president hides those facts, we will still find them, and we will report them.” As chairman of the House oversight committee, Issa is one of the chief investigators of government wrongdoing.
Issa also played a short montage of testimony from family members of the victims of the attacks on Benghazi and the Fast & Furious “gun running” program, as living evidence that the scandals were anything but phony.
ISSA’S OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE SLAMS OBAMA FOR DISMISSING ‘PHONY SCANDALS’
“Brian Terry’s family does not call it a ‘phony’ death … when he was murdered at the border,” Issa charged, remembering the U.S. Border Patrol agent killed with an assault rifle that the Department of Justice had allowed into the hands of Mexican drug cartels under Fast & Furious.
The meeting also touched on President Obama’s selective approach to enforcing the law, as exemplified by the White House’s non-stance on the military coup in Egypt and its delayed implementation of the employer mandate under Obamacare.
Obama “himself acknowledged that the employer mandate was not ready for prime time,” RSC chairman Rep. Steve Scalise said.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz made a surprise, somewhat off-topic, appearance part way through the meeting to continue his crusade against the implementation of Obamacare, which Cruz has proposed to nullify by defunding.
“The fight we are engaged in in the next 60 days, I think, is the most important fight this Congress is going to deal with,” Cruz said in reference to the upcoming months before Obamacare is implemented on October 1.
