Republicans Gone Wild

Bloomberg, encouraged by King, theatrically tossed the New York grant request on the witness table, where it landed with a thud. "That's what our submission was: two hundred pages done by the greatest group of experts I think anybody's ever put together."

"Yet for some reason, the department ranked your application second from the bottom," King said when Bloomberg finished, "which to me says a lot about the department."

Foresman, seated in the first row, fidgeted, scratched his brow and pinched his nose. His aides, carrying binders as if they were shields, hurried in and out of the room. They whispered frequently to Foresman, who scribbled notes.

But whatever Foresman was writing, it wasn't clever comebacks. His testimony blended small shows of contrition with long and technical descriptions that suggested the lawmakers didn't understand the situation. He advised Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) about an "empirically driven, analytically based ability to allocate dollars."

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) recommended that Foresman end the "nightmares of philosophical gobbledygook," then read back an offending sentence from his written testimony: "Risk analysis seeks to inform, not to dictate, the complex and difficult choices among possible measures to mitigate risks."

Foresman tucked in a few expressions of regret: "I don't like the situation we all find ourselves in. . . . We're going to learn from this process. . . . This is how we're going to get better." But he couldn't resist chiding the lawmakers for being parochial. Nobody had a problem with the administration's funding formula, he said, "until dollars were attached."

King tried a note of sympathy. "I'm sure it wasn't a pleasant experience listening to the first panel," the chairman said.

On the contrary, the victim replied. "It was actually a phenomenally positive experience."