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One of the responsibilities of Congress is the power of the purse, but there is also oversight. In order to have proper oversight, you have to have agency administrators, directors, and secretaries of those agencies speak frankly and about the facts.

I respect the Congress's oversight responsibility.

Congress has the constitutional authority to investigate the other agencies of government. We are the watchdogs of the taxpayer's money, and we have the right to know how that money is being spent and to conduct oversight over the government.

It's Congress' job to keep an eye on the other agencies and the workings of the entire government. It is our constitutional duty.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

The office has oversight of people who do analysis and oversight of people who do operations, but it is not charged with doing either. That is an important point to make. Those functions are performed by the CIA, DIA and other agencies.

In recent years, Republicans have argued that Congress is a more responsible policymaker than the executive branch. But when it comes to regulation, Congress is often much worse, and for just one reason: Executive agencies almost always focus on both costs and benefits, and Congress usually doesn't.

We have to remind the people: Congress has the constitutional obligation and public responsibility to oversee these issues and the Department of Justice's operations.

There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform.

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.