mr. speaker , i think my colleague is exactly right . 
what happened here today , h. res. 437 , is a tragedy . 
what happened right here on this floor today is a tragedy for the exact reason the gentleman just mentioned . 
now , for those people who are at home and who may not completely understand the whole situation , this body is run by the majority party , which is the republican party . 
and the majority party appoints to the committees members to the committee on ways and means , the committee on appropriations , the house homeland security committee , the subcommittee on foreign operations , export financing , and related programs , and all these different committees and subcommittees . 
the majority appoints more people to the committee than the minority , so they basically control the committee process in the house of representatives . 
now , some committees have subpoena powers and they can subpoena witnesses . 
but they will only subpoena witnesses that the majority party wants to subpoena . 
if the minority party would want to subpoena somebody , they could not because they could not get the power out of the committee without majority party votes . 
so the majority rules . 
what is happening in this congress and in the house and in the senate is that the republican party controls both chambers . 
so the democrats in the minority have no subpoena power . 
and what has happened over the past few years here , and the great example is the later clinton years , with ken starr , with the house committee on government reform , the republican party that controlled this chamber , they were the ones conducting the investigation into president clinton because they had the subpoena power and they had the opportunity to do it . 
so what we were trying to say , what the minority party was trying to say , the democrats were trying to say with h. res. 437 , is this select committee that will oversee and look at how the screwups went about down in the gulf coast should be equal . 
it should be democrats and republicans both having equal subpoena power to oversee the process , because the record for the majority party over the past few years has been atrocious . 
now , let us look at a couple of things . 
we have talked here many , many times regarding the war , with the weapons of mass destruction , all the prewar intelligence . 
has anybody looked into this in a real way , in depth ? 
subpoenaed witnesses ? 
anybody ? 
no . 
has anybody been fired ? 
no . 
how about the medicare bill that we passed at 3 in the morning . 
everyone was told here it was $ 400 billion . 
it ends up being 700 or $ 800 billion after we already voted for it . 
this majority party does not have the credibility , i say to my colleague , the credibility to oversee what is going on here because they are going to do nothing but whitewash this thing . 
get out the brillo pads because we are going to scrub this thing clean , and nothing is going to happen and the country is going to be worse off for it . 
so , my colleagues , h. res. 437 is a joke . 
it is a joke . 
and there will not be proper investigation . 
i just could not believe the debate on the floor today . 
the gentleman from mississippi ( mr. taylor ) xz4003992 , a democrat who lost his home , for god 's sake , was here . 
he is saying , should he not , as a representative of a state in a congressional district that lost lives and homes and property and everything else , should he not be able to subpoena somebody , just like every other member of congress , if i am on that committee ? 
or should the democrats , who many lost constituents of the 700-some that we lost , and some of those people were actually represented by democrats , should the minority party not have the opportunity to subpoena somebody ? 
but , no , this thing is going to get scrubbed . 
where is the transparency ? 
where is the equal opportunity ? 
where is the bipartisanship ? 
what this bill says is there is going to be nine democrats and 11 republicans . 
