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 )  , 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 .  