Cabinet secretaries with the ability to charm members of Congress should be banned from making congenial phone calls to lawmakers, a Tea Party Republican light-heartedly suggested at a House hearing Wednesday.
Rep. Joe Barton said he got a call on his personal cellphone “the other day” from Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, the top official charged with implementing President Obama’s healthcare law.
Burwell was “very charming and disarming,” Barton said, adding that this made it difficult for him to ask her difficult questions at an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the president’s budget.
“We may want to consider adopting a rule that cabinet secretaries cannot do that,” Barton said, generating some laughter around the room. “Just want to put that on the record.”
Barton also said such a rule should at least be applied to cabinet secretaries in an administration of the opposite political party as the member of Congress.
Barton went on to ask Burwell whether she’d support creating a new commission to examine the practice of using fetal tissue for medical research, an issue raised by videos last year targeting Planned Parenthood. Barton, who is a Republican from Texas, belongs to the House Tea Party Caucus.
