On May 28, 2014 Rep. Virgina Foxx of North Carolina asked for and was granted permission to address the US House of Representatives for one minute regarding the Veterans Administration:
“Mr. Speaker, as the unfolding scandal at the VA demonstrates, the administration has a standard playbook for dealing with an unfolding PR disaster:
The first step is to say the President learned about the situation on the news and is madder than anyone else about it;
Step two is to declare an investigation underway;
Step three is to implore us all to wait patiently for the always slow investigation to be completed;
Step four is to declare the scandal old news.
The underlying theme is that we must allow the bureaucratic machinery to sort out the problems, and we must not interfere with the process.
Mr. Speaker, Samuel Johnson once said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but in our political culture today, process is the last refuge of those who seek to avoid true accountability”, said Rep. Foxx (source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov/).
Congresswoman Foxx is the Vice Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Rules.
The Committee on Rules is among the oldest standing committees in the House of Representatives, having been first formally constituted on April 2, 1789. The Committee is commonly known as “The Speaker’s Committee” because it is the mechanism used by the Speaker of the House to maintain control of the House Floor, and was chaired by the Speaker until 1910. Because of the vast power wielded by the Rules Committee, its ratio has traditionally been weighted in favor of the majority party.