Senate Oversight Quotes

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, warned Facebook of the need for consumer protection and an open Internet, and according to 'The Wall Street Journal,' Thune has sent a letter to Zuckerberg asking how the company chooses its trending topics and who is ultimately responsible.

The stationing of U. S. troops abroad on a permanent basis in foreign military installations is the kind of thing that should not be done without the approval of the Senate.

It had better be known in the outset whether the President is the head of the government or the registering clerk of the Senate.

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

I find it disturbing that no member of the Senate Armed Services Committee is willing to acknowledge that record of failure and to ask our next secretary of defense what he proposes to do to amend that sorry record.

The President must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them, — in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him.

The Appropriations Committee in the Senate is out of control, out of control on spending.

Advice and consent does not mean rubber stamp in the Senate.

For senators to complain that they didn't know this was happening, we had many, many meetings that have been both classified and unclassified that members have been invited to.

Judicial excellence requires candor before confirmation. We are being asked to give the nominee enormous power.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol has fallen into severe disrepair... As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees matters of the Capitol's physical plant, I have serious concerns about the consequences of omitting this funding from the stopgap spending measure.

It is abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary so that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are fully informed as to what is actually being carried out by the intelligence community.

When the President picks someone who is his ideological soul mate, that's his right, in my reading of "advise and consent." I do think, though, the more you get up the ladder, when someone is no longer accountable to the President, and more importantly, will stay in office after the President, the standard gets tougher and tougher.