Top 55 Oversight Quotes

It is crucial that the House exercises its oversight functions to ensure constitutional accountability of government agencies, especially as the bureaucracies associated with ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank flex their muscles and seek to expand their authority.

Federal Reserve officials have stressed the importance of the Fed’s independence. But such independence does not mean that it is immune from Congressional oversight.

108 members of congress have signed onto my Resolution of No Confidence in Attorney General Holder as a first step towards recognizing that he must be held accountable for the actions of his department and for his personal unwillingness to cooperate with congressional oversight requests.

If the City Council wants to hold the police accountable, it has the subpoena power and oversight responsibility to do so. They don’t have the courage to do it.

Uncontrolled access to data, with no audit trail of activity and no oversight would be going too far. This applies to both commercial and government use of data about people.

The Missouri Justice Reinvestment Executive Oversight Council plays an important role in meeting justice reinvestment goals and advising the Governor’s Office on implementation of the Missouri Justice Reinvestment Act.

A sovereignty is always presumed to act upon principles of justice, and if, from mistake or oversight, it does injury to a nation or an individual, it is always supposed to be ready and willing to repair it.

When individual members of the team are highly disciplined, they can be trusted and, therefore, allowed to operate with very little oversight.

TSA serves as the operator, administrator and regulator for the nation’s transportation security. But in fact, the TSA bureaucracy does all it can to thwart any conversion to a system with more private-sector operations and strong federal oversight and standards. This agency cannot, and should not, do it all.

Football, or soccer as it is known, is a game of two halves. It’s a game with rules and a referee. FIFA, the governing body for football, follows neither the rule of law or has the oversight of a referee.

The insecurity that comes from being behind bars with, at best, imperfect oversight makes us all feel responsible only for ourselves. We end up either docile, apathetic, and unwilling to engage with each other, or hostile, angry, violent, and resentful.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, the American people want us to legislate, they want us to insist on furthering their set of values, but they also want us to resist and exercise our oversight powers.

Our current way of regulating the financial system is dysfunctional. Oversight is dispersed among numerous confusing bodies that at times have seemed to be racing each other to the bottom. Setting up One Big Regulator would end that problem.

As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.

At the NYPD, a judge doesn’t need to sign off on opening up an investigation into a mosque as a terrorism organization. The oversight is internal.

Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight.

Saying that you are advocating on behalf of small business does not grant a license to spend at will on more and more programs without congressional input, oversight, or statutory authority.

Understanding how the media actually works is critical. Because editors depend on ignorance and media illiteracy to ply their trade. The fact that many readers expect fact checking, editorial oversight, and ethics actually makes it easier for the media to be lazy.

I voted against H.R. 4293, the Stress Test Improvement Act of 2017, which would modify the regulatory oversight of certain financial institutions in a way that is likely to expose our economy to greater risk.

Our soldiers deserve better. They need a plan for success. They need an administration that is honest about the costs of war, human and otherwise, and they need full accountability and oversight on Capitol Hill.

Snowden’s revelations shocked the world and made it very clear why we need to have some way to look over those who look over us. With increasing terrorist attacks, security is critical, but not without any accountability or oversight.

I respect the Congress’s oversight responsibility.

The NSA should keep close watch on suspected terrorists to keep our country safe – through programs permitting due process, the naming of a suspect, and oversight by an accountable court.

We forget that the main constitutional responsibility of the MLAs and MPs that we vote for is law making, and oversight of the executive to implement those laws. During my husband’s 2014 election campaign, I did not hear a single voter mention this aspect of the legislator’s role.

I’m offering solutions to address rising healthcare prices by adding transparency to our drug pricing, clearing the backlog on pending drug applications at the FDA, and providing oversight and accountability within the healthcare industry.

I am a Marine Corps veteran, but more importantly – or as important maybe – I’m the chairman of the Oversight Investigation Subcommittee and the House Veterans Affair Committee.

Cliff Stearns talks about what he did to Planned Parenthood, making Solyndra a household name – why didn’t he do this sooner? Why didn’t he see it coming? It’s the oversight committee, not the hindsight committee.

We are very much engaged across the government, very much engaged in streamlining and simplifying our activities with borrowers and lenders, because that saves time and saves costs and we believe we can do that while maintaining the same or increased levels of oversight and risk management.

Oftentimes, secrecy involves creating spaces that are outside of the law but are outside the normal channels of oversight. And I think it’s pretty easy to see that if you create spaces that are essentially outside the law, then you’re creating spaces where anything can happen.

NSA is a very conservative culture legally. Our lawyers at NSA were notorious for their conservatism up through the morning of September 11th, 2001. The single most consistent criticism of the NSA legal office by our congressional oversight committee was that our legal office was too conservative.

Large financial institutions in this country will always play a role that is essential to our economic growth. But they must only be permitted to grow and interconnect, throughout our economy, under careful oversight and with a mechanism for allowing those connections to be broken safely.

If you are a certain kind of hands-on learner and have been in a writers room and know how scripts get made, and you know what pre-production is, then mostly it’s making sure the actors get what they need, and you are providing creative oversight while allowing room for everyone else to own the material, too.

Under the Trump administration, the traditional structure of White House oversight of American offensive and defensive cyberactivities is being dismantled.

Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order – the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process – was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption.

I think that together the church has learned a lot, and as we know from our own oversight board, the involvement of our wonderful lay leaders has been a real grace.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks have adopted broad public policy objectives to guide the development and oversight of the payments system. At the Fed, we have identified efficiency and safety as our most fundamental objectives, as set forth in our Policy on Payment System Risk.

I think there’s a need for more oversight by social workers, because there are a lot of foster parents who are just collecting checks. They need to look closely into the backgrounds of the people whose hands you’re putting the kids into and then continue to monitor them.

It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people.

Our Constitution in many situations rightly demands a warrant or order before we take investigative steps. And the FISC provides that vital, independent oversight.

I believe that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be reformed. We must improve the American public’s confidence in, and perception of, our national security programs, by increasing transparency, strengthening oversight, and safeguarding civil liberties.

And I have been campaigning for the past three months trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee that has the oversight authority and responsibility to start its own public hearings.

I believe that successfully addressing our national security needs while protecting our basic freedoms and civil liberties requires continual Congressional oversight, and I will continue to work to assert the role of this body in carrying out this grave responsibility.