Quotes About Oversight

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.

When you've been given a curse of perspective you don't stop to consider the gift of oversight that most humans have been bestowed with.

Responsible, who wants to be responsible? Whenever something bad happens, it's always, who's responsible for this?

Budgets were originally designed as control mechanisms. As such they are traps …

Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.

You can delegate authority, but not responsibility.

There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself." —

Maybe they should take a closer look at the people they elect.

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.

Governments should be smaller. In fact, governments and countries in general are less important than we think they are. They take credit for processes they have nothing to do with.

None of this means that government does not have a very real function. Indeed, the tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly. The basic functions of government are to defend the nation against foreign enemies, to prevent coercion of some individuals by others within the country, to provide a means of deciding on our rules, and to adjudicate disputes.3

I love the cameras and don't mind mailing in my check when I fail to pay attention and go too fast.

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON, 1950

Nevertheless, it was a terrible mistake on my part.

I would like to hear the words public lands spoken in every election debate, with candidates holding both government and corporations accountable in their oversight and use. The fact of more than three hundred million visits to our national parks last year tells me I am not alone.

It is true that there have been excesses of judicial activism.

Independence of Judiciary means independence from Executive and Legislature, but not independence from accountability.

Indeed, public scrutiny is desirable for healthy functioning of judiciary itself.

Our runaway judiciary is badly in need of restraint by Congress.

People in the U.S. pay a great deal of money to support their judiciary, and they have an actual right to see how it functions.

I've led a grand jury.

In a lot of ways, civil rights division is the conscience of the Justice Department. You can almost measure what kind of Justice Department you have by what kind of civil rights division that you have.

In some cases, Justice Department leaders can supervise investigations despite having personal knowledge about the entities involved.

It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.