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Taking questions from members of the Senate Homeland security and Governmental Affairs committee taking questions from members of the Senate Homeland security and Governmental Affairs committee. [inaudible conversations] the hearing will come to order. Thank you to the inspector and his team to be here i know you had to raise your hand to identify yourself all those who did this excellent work. Thank you for all your hard work and efforts as the main subject of our hearing today the what you have received for your efforts is already deserved and to share those sentiments this is an important step to provide the answers to many questions that have festered for far too long. That the scope is narrow and most non more important questions remain unanswered ....
Host joining us on newsmakers is Ellen Weintraub. She is the chair of the federal election commission. Joining us here for the questioning is Maggie Severns, reporter for politico. And michelle ye hee lee, who covers money and politics for the Washington Post. To both of you, thanks for being with us. Chairman weintraub, thank you for joining us. Let me begin with the enforcement mechanism that the fec has. You do not have a quorum. You do not have a majority. So what type of authority, what type of power do you have in enforcing fec laws . Chair weintraub well, the laws will be enforced, they are just not going to be enforced right now. There is a five year statute of limitations. No one should be under any illusions that if they do something now because of a lack of quorum, there will not be any enforcement. It is un ....
Enforcement. It is unfortunate we dont have a quorum. It is inexcusable, in my view. We had two commissioners who resigned, one two years ago, another almost two years ago. Those seats were never filled. Host why . Chair weintraub i dont know. That is something i have no control over. The nominations have to be made by the president and confirmed by the senate. I think it is inexcusable that those nominations were not made. It is easy to get over the long vacancies. We should have never been in this situation we found ourselves in. We are down to a quorum of four. Another commissioner decided to resign. That left us with only three. It takes four commissioners to initiate investigations, to authorize penalties and approve conciliation agreements. Which is usually the way we conclude them. However, people should know before we lost the quorum, we authorized a number of investigations. We are at a high point in a decade in the number of investigations we have ongoing. As soon as we get c ....
Illusions that if they do something now because of a lack of quorum, there will not be any enforcement. It is unfortunate we dont have a quorum. It is inexcusable, in my view. We had two commissioners who resigned, one two years ago, another almost two years ago. Those seats were never felt. Never filled. Host why . Chair weintraub i dont know. That is something i have no control over. The nominations have to be made by the president and senate. It is easy to get over the long vacancies. We should have never been in this situation we found ourselves in. We are down to a quorum of four. Another commissioner decided to resign. That left us with only three. Totakes four commissioners initiate investigations, to authorize penalties and approve conciliation agreements. However, people should know before we lost the quorum, we authorized a number of investigations. We are at a high point in a decade in the number of investigations we have ongoing. As soon as we get commissioners back in, we ....
Thank you all for swrojoining u today. The subcommittee will come to order. The chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. The decision to deport children with critical illnesses, a decision that was recently reversed following public outrage and pressure from the subcommittee. I will now recognize myself for five minutes to give an Opening Statement then turn to the Ranking Member. We are here to get to the bottom of the administrations mysterious campaign to deport critically ill children and their families. It appears that this policy has thankfully been reversed. They rose up in an outcry at the cold humanity on display. Im going to treat this hearing not only as an honor to Elijah Cummings, but as a hearing in direct pursuit of a policy objective that was close to his heart. The threatened deportation ....