The pro-marijuana lobby claims today’s hearing on the Justice Department’s enforcement priorities on marijuana lacked data and relied on anecdotes.
But there was a lot of data. In Colorado, from 2012 to 2014, the number of hospitalizations related to marijuana increased 70%, the number of traffic deaths related to marijuana rose 20%, and interdiction seizures of Colorado marijuana destined for other states jumped 31%. This is all in just two years.
Senator Grassley cited these data points in his statement and in charts he used to question witnesses.
The charts came from a report from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a drug prohibition enforcement program run by the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Here’s a similar report for Washington state, which, like Colorado, also legalized marijuana for recreational use.
But the fact that there are some areas where there is little data, or incomplete data, is the point.
The hearing was about whether the Justice Department is effectively gathering data on how state recreational legalization is impacting its federal enforcement priorities. These priorities include preventing diversion to states that haven’t legalized it, and protecting minors from harm. The attorney general of Nebraska is highly concerned about marijuana coming from Colorado. The Justice Department needs to do a better job gathering and analyzing data on its enforcement priorities, as it said it would.
The hearing was also about how – if at all – the Department is using data to determine whether its policy is working to protect the public, or whether it needs to challenge state laws that are in conflict with federal law, as it reserved the right to do. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office confirmed in a recent report that the Department has not adhered to these commitments.
Regardless of individual views on marijuana legalization, the Justice Department isn’t doing what it said it would do. The data show why the public has reason to worry about the Justice Department’s lack of follow-through.
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Grassley Looks to Close Farm Payment Loophole Left Open in Farm Bill
WASHINGTON - Senator Chuck Grassley, one of the only working family farmers in the United States Senate, is continuing his work to ensure the farm program returns to its original intent to help small- and medium-sized farms whether the highs and lows of farming that are out of a farmer’s control.
Grassley is introducing the Farm Payment Loophole Elimination Act to close the farm subsidy loophole that was intentionally included in the 2014 farm bill. The current law allows non-farming family members to receive farm subsidies at the expense of young farmers and the American taxpayers.
The original actively engaged language that both bodies of Congress passed as part of the 2014 farm bill would have limited the number of ‘non-farming managers’ to one per entity. However, conferees denied these reforms put forth by Grassley and overwhelmingly approved by both houses of Congress, and instead opted for instructions that restricted the Department’s ability to fix blatant abuses of the farm safety net.
“The final farm bill language on payment limits was an egregious manipulation of my amendment that passed both chambers,” Grassley said. “The loophole the conference committee included in the bill left non-farming family members completely outside the scope of the new actively engaged rules the Department of Agriculture finalized in December.”
The bill strikes language from the 2014 farm bill that allowed for non-farmers, who happen to be family members but aren’t involved in the work or management of the farm or own farm land, to receive farm subsidy payments. If adopted, the change would apply to the 2017 and subsequent crop years.
“The legislation I’ve introduced today will help level the playing field for young farmers and save taxpayers money,” Grassley said. “It’s a real win-win.”
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Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Hearing on “Is the Department of Justice
Adequately Protecting the Public from the Impact of State Recreational Marijuana Legalization?”
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Prepared Statement of Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa
In 2013, the Department of Justice decided to all but abandon the enforcement of federal law relating to the possession, cultivation, and distribution of marijuana in states that were in the process of becoming the only jurisdictions in the world to legalize and regulate all these activities for recreational use.
To provide that decision the veneer of legitimacy, then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole issued a memorandum characterizing its new policy as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
But this policy doesn’t reflect proper enforcement discretion, any more than the President’s executive action on immigration did the following year. Legitimate enforcement discretion doesn’t tolerate and incentivize ongoing, widespread, and unlawful conduct.
But a few years later, that’s where the Department’s policy has led. A number of states now authorize, oversee, and profit from sprawling recreational marijuana enterprises.
To flesh out its purported enforcement discretion, the Cole Memorandum also described eight federal priorities it claimed would guide the Department’s efforts. These priorities included preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors and the diversion of marijuana to other states, as well as preventing drugged driving and other public health consequences.
And the memorandum made clear that its guidance was conditional. It rested on its expectation that states would “implement strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems” to address the threat recreational legalization “could pose to public safety, public health, and other law enforcement interests.” According to the memorandum, these systems had to ensure that federal priorities weren’t undermined.
In fact, the memorandum went on to warn that “if state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust to protect against the harms set forth above, the federal government may seek to challenge the regulatory structure itself.”
So the Department effectively took responsibility to monitor the effect that recreational legalization would have on its enforcement priorities.
In addition, a bipartisan consensus developed that the memorandum also required the Department to develop metrics so the federal government would know when it needed to step in further.
I first raised this issue at a Judiciary Committee hearing soon after the memorandum was issued. Senator Whitehouse, a Democratic member of that Committee and this Caucus, echoed my concern, telling Deputy Attorney General Cole that:
“I think the Department would be well advised to listen to Senator Grassley’s advice about trying to establish as clear metrics as you comfortably can, because there can be a lot of unintended consequences from the broad zone of uncertainty that you can create, and that can frankly be quite harmful in and of itself.”
Even the New York Times agreed. Shortly thereafter, it editorialized that “Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee rightly asked how, exactly, the Justice Department would evaluate whether the states were holding up their end of the bargain. . . If it wants its ‘trust but verify’ approach to work, it will have to start filling in the details.”
Almost three years, later, however, the report that the Government Accountability Office completed at my and Senator Feinstein’s request makes clear that the Department hasn’t done so.
First, the report found that the Department isn’t adequately monitoring what is occurring in the states. As the report concluded, officials “have not documented their monitoring process or provided specificity about key aspects of it, including potential limitations of the data they report using.”
Second, according to the report, the Department hasn’t developed metrics to guide how it will use this data in relation to its policy. According to GAO, officials “did not identify how they would use the data from these various reports and studies to monitor the effects of marijuana legalization relative to each of the eight marijuana enforcement priorities.”
The report concluded, “officials also did not state how DOJ would use the information to determine whether the effects of state marijuana legalization necessitated federal action to challenge a state’s regulatory system.”
This is precisely what I warned about in 2013. The Department’s inability to answer these questions for GAO is inexcusable. So today I plan to explore them with our witnesses.
Indeed, the public health and safety data that’s widely available only underscores the need to fill in these blanks. In Colorado, for example, from 2012 to 2014, the number of hospitalizations related to marijuana increased 70%, the number of traffic deaths related to marijuana rose 20%, and interdiction seizures of Colorado marijuana destined for other states jumped 31%. This is all in just two years.
I’m not suggesting that the federal government use its limited resources to go around arresting anyone smoking marijuana. That’s never been the federal role in this area, and it shouldn’t be. And today’s hearing doesn’t have anything to do with the potential medical use of CBD oil, which I wholly support researching.
But our country is in the middle of an epidemic of addiction focused on heroin and prescription opioids. And just last year, the Centers for Disease Control found that people who are addicted to marijuana are three times more likely to be addicted to heroin.
So if the Obama Administration is serious about addressing this epidemic, it should stop burying its head in the sand about what’s happening to its enforcement priorities on recreational marijuana. And it should use what it learns to develop a coherent enforcement approach that protects public health and safety, and is consistent with its obligation to take care that our laws are faithfully executed.
We’ll try to make some progress toward those goals today.
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WASHINGTON – The Senate last night passed the bipartisan Defend Trade Secrets Act to shield American innovators against growing instances of intellectual property theft involving valuable proprietary information. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley convened a hearing on trade secrets theft last December and steered the bill to committee passage earlier this year. The bill passed the full Senate by a vote of 87-0.
Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer was the victim in a high profile 2013 trade secrets case in which six foreign nationals conspired to steal engineered corn seeds in order to benefit a foreign company. The seeds were the product of $30 million to $40 million in ag research, according to federal prosecutors. The Defend Trade Secrets Act would create a new avenue for companies like DuPont Pioneer to pursue civil claims against trade secret thieves in federal court and protect against the dissemination of valuable intellectual property.
“Innovators of all sizes are increasingly reliant on trade secrets to expand their businesses and serve their customers, but this proprietary information has also become a growing object of economic espionage. In Iowa, we’ve seen first-hand how some of our most innovative agricultural companies, like Pioneer, have been targeted by trade secret thieves. This bill provides new tools for businesses to fight back against bad actors and prevent thieves from disseminating valuable trade secrets. I was eager to move this bill through the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now that the Senate has passed it, the House should take swift action to protect American ingenuity,” Grassley said.
Trade secrets are an increasingly important aspect of intellectual property, but our patchwork of state laws often provides little reprieve for victims of trade secret misappropriation when thieves are able to quickly travel across state lines and utilize emerging technology to aid in their theft. The Defend Trade Secrets Act establishes a federal civil remedy for trade secret theft that will result in uniform national litigation standards for trade secret theft cases. The bill allows victims to quickly move a case to federal court without preempting state laws. It will also help to spur future innovation by protecting this valuable form of intellectual property. The bill was introduced by senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.), and is cosponsored by Grassley and 62 other senators.
The Defend Trade Secrets Act is the 17th piece of legislation reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Grassley to be passed by the full Senate. Each bill cleared by the committee has been bipartisan.
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FYI-Senator Grassley spoke to Judge Garland early this evening and invited the judge to breakfast where they could discuss the nomination and why the Senate will not consider a nominee until the next President takes office. Date and time TBD.
“When the Justices return to their appropriate role of deciding cases based on the facts and law, public perception of the court will take care of itself.”
Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
The Public Perception of the Supreme Court
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Mr. President, a significant number of Americans believe the Supreme Court is highly politicized. Its approval rating has fallen over the years. Not surprisingly, its approval rating has dropped most drastically in recent years following the President’s appointment of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan.
There are four Justices who vote in a liberal way in effectively every case the public follows. There are two Justices who stick to the constitutional text and vote in a consistently conservative way. One Justice votes mostly but not always in a conservative way. And one Justice votes sometimes with the conservatives and sometimes with the liberals.
All of the liberals were appointed by Democrats. The conservatives and the swing Justices were appointed by Republicans.
But in a speech shortly before Justice Scalia’s death, Chief Justice Roberts maintained that the public wrongly thinks the Justices view themselves as Democrats or Republicans.
Of course, it’s irrelevant to the public how the Justices view themselves. What’s troubling is that a large segment of the population views the Justices as political.
It’s appropriate and instructive, then, to ask why the public takes this view, and whether it’s warranted.
I believe the public’s perception is sometimes warranted.
The Chief Justice ruled out that this perception has anything to do with what the Justices have done. Instead, he attributes it to the Senate’s confirmation process. As he sees it, senators “frequently ask us questions they know it would be inappropriate for us to answer. Thankfully, we don’t answer the questions.”
The Chief Justice also stated, “When you have a sharply divided political divisive hearing process, it increases the danger that whoever comes out of it will be viewed in those terms. You know if the Democrats and Republicans have been fighting so fiercely about whether you’re going to be confirmed, it’s natural for some members of the public to think, well, you must be identified in a particular way as a result of that process.”
On the one hand, the Chief Justice identified precisely why it would be bad for the court and the nominee to move forward in the middle of a hotly contested presidential election campaign.
As I’ve said, it would be all politics, and no Constitution. That, of course, was the thrust of Chairman Biden’s argument in 1992.
But in another respect, the Chief Justice has it exactly backwards. The confirmation process doesn’t make the Justices appear political. The confirmation process has gotten political precisely because the court has drifted from the constitutional text, and rendered decisions based instead on policy preferences.
In short, the Justices themselves have gotten political. And because the Justices’ decisions are often political and transgress their constitutional role, the process becomes more political.
In fact, many of my constituents believe, with all due respect, that the Chief Justice is part of this problem.
They believe that a number of his votes have reflected political considerations, not legal ones. And certainly there are academics who agree.
In a recent New York Times article academics appealed to the Chief Justice’s political side. They’re asking him to intervene in the current Supreme Court vacancy, suggesting it could be a John Marshall moment for him.
That’s a political temptation that the Chief Justice should resist.
I can’t think of anything any current Justice could do to further damage respect for the court at this moment than to interject themselves into what Chairman Biden called the political “cauldron” of an election year Supreme Court vacancy.
In his recent speech, the Chief Justice said, “We’re interpreting the law, and not imposing our views.” “If people don’t like the explanation, or don’t think it holds together, you know, then they’re justified, I think, in viewing us as having transgressed the limits of our role.”
Again, with all due respect to the Chief Justice, tens of millions of Americans believe, correctly, the Supreme Court has transgressed the limits of its role. Tens of millions of Americans believe, correctly, that too many of the Justices are imposing their views, and not interpreting the law.
That’s a major reason why we should have a debate about the proper role of a Supreme Court Justice. And we need to debate whether our current Justices are adhering to their constitutional role.
As the Chief Justice remarked, although many of the Supreme Court’s decisions are unanimous or nearly so, the Justices tend to disagree on what the Chief Justice called the “hot button issues.” We all know what kinds of cases he had in mind. Freedom of religion, abortion, affirmative action, gun control, free speech, the death penalty, and others.
The Chief Justice was very revealing when he acknowledged that the lesser known cases are often unanimous and the “hot button” cases are frequently 5-4.
But why is that?
The law is no more or less likely to be clear in a “hot button” case than in other cases.
For those Justices committed to the rule of law, it shouldn’t be any harder to keep personal preferences out of politically charged cases than others.
In some cases, the Justices are all willing to follow the law. But in others, where they are deeply invested in the policy implications of the ruling, they are 5-4.
The explanation for these 5-4 rulings must be that in the “hot button” cases, some of the Justices are deciding based on their political preferences and not the law.
But, if “hot button” cases are being decided by politicians in robes, then the Supreme Court has no more of a right than the voters to be the final word.
The Chief Justice regrets that the American people believe the court is no different from the political branches of government.
But again, with respect, I think he is concerned with the wrong problem. He would be well-served to address the reality, not the perception, that too often, there is little difference between the actions of the court and the actions of the political branches.
Physician, heal thyself.
In case after 5-4 case, the Justices the Democrats appointed vote for liberal policy results.
This can’t be a coincidence.
Democrat Presidents know what they want when they nominate Justices – Justices who will reach politically liberal results regardless of what the law requires.
This, of course, is what our current President means when he says that he wants Justices who look to their “heart” to decide the really hard cases. That’s an unambiguous invitation for Justices to decide the “hot button” cases based on personal policy preferences.
That, of course, isn’t law and it is not the appropriate role for the court.
It’s no wonder that the public believes the court is political.
And what Democrat Presidents want in this regard, is what they get. Even before Justice Scalia’s death, leading scholars found this Supreme Court to be the most liberal since the 1960’s.
Justices appointed by Republicans are generally committed to following the law. There are Justices who frequently vote in a conservative way. But some of the Justices appointed by Republicans often don’t vote in a way that advances conservative policy.
And contrary to what the Chief Justice suggested, a major reason the confirmation process has become more divisive is that some of the Justices are voting too often based on politics and not on law. If they’re going to be political actors after they’re confirmed, then the confirmation process necessarily will reflect that dynamic.
For instance, just last week, after one of my Democrat colleagues met with Judge Garland, this Senator said, after discussing issues like “reproductive rights,” “I actually feel quite confident that he is deserving of my support.”
Obviously, I don’t know what they discussed during that meeting, or what Judge Garland said about “reproductive rights.” And to be clear, I’m not suggesting anything inappropriate was discussed.
My point is this: if Justices stuck to the constitutional text, and didn’t base decisions on their own policy preferences, or what’s in their “heart”, or on “empathy” for a particular litigant, then Senators wouldn’t deem it necessary to understand whether the nominee supports “reproductive rights.”
With this in mind, is it any wonder the public believes the court is political?
If we want the confirmation process to be less divisive, if we want the public to have more confidence that the Justices haven’t exceeded their constitutional role, then the Justices need to demonstrate that in politically sensitive cases, their decisions are based on the Constitution and the law and not on their political preferences.
When the Justices return to their appropriate role of deciding cases based on the facts and law, public perception of the court will take care of itself.
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Prepared Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
Inspector General Empowerment Act (S.579)
April 4, 2016
Mr. President, this body was last in session during Sunshine Week, but the principle of government transparency is one that does not expire. So, I’d like to take a few moments now to reiterate my support for that timeless principle.
Open government is good government. And Americans have a right to a government that is accountable to its people.
In 1978, following the lessons learned from the Watergate scandal, Congress created Inspectors General—or IGs—to be our eyes and ears within the executive branch. These independent watchdogs are designed to keep Congress and the public informed about waste, fraud, and abuse in government. But they also help agency leaders identify problems and inefficiencies that they may not be aware of.
So, IGs are critical to good governance and to the rule of law. But in order for these watchdogs to do their jobs, IGs need access to agency records. That’s why the law authorizes IGs to access “all” records of the agency that they’re charged with overseeing.
However, since 2010, more and more agencies have refused to comply with this legal obligation. This obstruction has slowed down far too many important investigations—ranging from sexual assaults in the Peace Corps to the FBI’s exercise of anti-terrorism authorities under the PATRIOT Act.
Last July, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel aided and abetted the obstruction by issuing a memo defending it. That memo has given cover to other agencies to follow the FBI’s lead and withhold records from their IGs.
According to OLC’s 66-page opinion, Congress didn’t really mean to give IGs access to “all records” – even though that is literally what we spelled out in the law.
Think about that for a second. One unelected bureaucrat in the Justice Department thinks he can overturn the will of 535 elected officials in Congress and the President who signed the bill into law. That is unacceptable, and Americans are tired of stunts like this that undermine democracy and the rule of law, and make a mockery of government transparency. The public deserves robust scrutiny of the federal government.
So, since September, a bipartisan group of senators and I have been working to overturn the OLC opinion through S.579, the Inspector General Empowerment Act. Among other things, this bill includes further clarification that Congress intended IGs to access all agency records, notwithstanding any other provision of law, unless other laws specifically state that IGs are not to receive such access.
We attempted to pass this bill by unanimous consent in September. Since then, the co-sponsors and I have worked hard in good faith to accommodate the concerns of any and all Senators willing to work with us. As a result, this bill now has a total of 17 co-sponsors, including 7 of my esteemed Democratic colleagues: Senators McCaskill, Carper, Mikulski, Wyden, Baldwin, Manchin, and Peters. I want to thank each one of them for standing up with me for Inspectors General and for the principles of good governance.
In December, we attempted to pass this bipartisan bill by unanimous consent. The bill cleared the Republican side with no objection, but the bill was objected to on the Democratic side.
So, let’s do the math. None of the 54 Republican Senators objected. There are 7 Democrat co-sponsors. That’s at least 61 votes. At least.
If this bill came up for a vote, it would certainly pass easily. It was developed hand-in-hand over many months with both Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives, which is ready to move an identical bill as soon as we act here in the Senate.
So, on December 15th, Senators McCaskill, Johnson, and I attempted to pass this bill by a process known as a Live Unanimous Consent (UC). Our goal was to pass the bill right then and there, and we could have, had a Senator not objected.
However, the Minority Leader, Senator Reid stood up and objected.
The Minority Leader obstructed a bill sponsored by 7 Senators of his own party. Senator Reid refused to give any reason for obstructing this bipartisan bill, both at that time and later when questioned by reporters. All he would say publicly was that a Senator on his side of the aisle had concerns.
Apparently, Sen. Reid is now telling the press that his concerns relate to provisions of the bill that give IGs the power to subpoena testimony from former federal employees. In a moment, I will explain why this authority is absolutely vital to the ability of IGs to conduct effective investigations.
But before I do that, I want to make one thing crystal clear: My bi-partisan co-sponsors and I have been working in good faith to address these concerns for 5 months—since November 2015. In those 5 months, we have offered at least half a dozen different accommodations that would limit the subpoena authority in question. So, we have offered reasonable compromises, but the one or two Senators who object to this provision appear to be demanding it be removed from the bill entirely.
Let me tell you why we cannot do that. When employees of the U.S. government are accused of wrongdoing or misconduct, IGs should be able to conduct a full and thorough investigation of those allegations. Getting to the bottom of these allegations is necessary to restore the public trust. Unfortunately, employees who may have violated that trust are often allowed to evade the IG’s inquiry, by simply retiring from the government. So, the bill empowers IGs to obtain testimony from employees like this.
Similarly, the bill helps IGs better expose waste, fraud, and abuse by those who receive federal funds. It enables IGs to require testimony from government contractors and subcontractors and grantees and sub-grantees.
Currently, most IGs can subpoena documents from entities from outside their agency. However, most cannot subpoena testimony, although a few can. For example, the Inspectors General for the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services already have this authority.
The ability to require witnesses outside the agency to talk to the IG can be critical in carrying out an inspector general’s statutory duties or recovering wasted federal funds. But Mr. President, I want to be clear: the bill also imposes limitations on the authority of IGs to require testimony.
There are several procedural protections in place to ensure that this authority is exercised wisely. For example, the subpoena must first be approved by a majority of a designated panel of three other IGs. It is then referred to the Attorney General.
For those IGs that can already subpoena witness testimony, I am not aware of any instance in which it has been misused. In fact, the Inspector General for the Department of Defense has established a policy that spells out additional procedures and safeguards to ensure that subjects of subpoenas are treated fairly. I’m confident that the rest of the IG community will be just as scrupulous in providing appropriate protections for the use of this authority, as well. You see, we all win when IGs can do their jobs.
This is a common sense, bipartisan bill that should have passed by unanimous consent. It overturns an OLC opinion that has been roundly criticized by nearly everyone who has read it. For example, the New York Times editorial board recently urged us to pass this bill, so that we can allow IGs to do their jobs.
But, Senator Reid is standing in the way of the Senate doing its job.
The Washington Post editorial board and the Project on Government Oversight have also called on us to fix this IG access problem.
At a Judiciary Committee hearing in August, Senator Leahy said that this access problem is “blocking what was once a free flow of information.” Senator Leahy also called for a permanent legislative solution. Even the Justice Department witness at that hearing disagreed with the results of the OLC opinion and supported legislative action to solve the problem.
But, to all of that, Senator Reid said “NO.”
Make no mistake: by blocking this bipartisan, good-government bill, Senator Reid is muzzling watchdogs—and the public is being robbed of their right to an accountable government.
Because the Minority Leader has refused to explain himself, no one can tell whether his objection is grounded in policy or just raw politics. What is it about independent Inspector General oversight that the Minority Leader is afraid of?
Remember, the public is better served when IGs are able to shine light into government operations and stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
And the public is beginning to take notice of Senator Reid’s behavior. Just last week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal—which is the largest circulating daily newspaper in the minority leader’s home state—published an article discussing his obstruction.
Let me just take a moment to read a quote from this article:
“U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada received a government watchdog group’s dubious honor ... for blocking a bill to back inspectors general in their battles against waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement and refusing to provide a full explanation on why he did so.”
Then, just over this weekend, the editorial board of this same newspaper wrote an opinion piece titled, “Let the sun shine in.” Let me just read an excerpt from this article:
“Because Sen. Grassley’s bill has attracted bipartisan support, and because Republicans and Democrats jointly have objected to efforts to thwart IGs from doing their jobs, we’re confident that compromise is possible … We urge Sens. Reid and Grassley to work together to pass this important legislation as quickly as possible.”
As I mentioned earlier, the bipartisan group of cosponsors and I have already offered half a dozen different accommodations to address the concerns related to the subpoena authority provision. All of those offers are still on the table, and we stand ready to work with Sen. Reid and any other Senator to get this bill done, in a way that improves IG access to both documents and witness testimony.
Remember, the Inspector General Act was passed in 1978, following one of the worst political scandals in American history.
Today, at least 61 Senators, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and good governance groups like POGO and Citizens Against Government Waste, all support restoring the intent of that Act—through S.579.
This bill would redeem the free flow of information that Senator Leahy advocated in August.
And every day that goes by without overturning the OLC opinion is another day that watchdogs across the government can be stonewalled.
Let me be clear. Only one Senator is publicly standing in the way of fixing this problem.
We need to find a way to get this bill done. Especially now, we need to focus on the things we can agree on. When there is something with this much bi-partisan support, it should be a no-brainer. One or two Senators should not be allowed to stand in the way.
So, I urge my colleagues to work with me to get S.579 passed, so that IGs can resume doing the work that we asked them to do in 1978.
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