—I have the floor right now, I believe.
It's up to the witnesses, of course—and I see where you're coming from—to defer on a question that they feel is more in the realm of politics, but I have never been in a committee in which the chair told a member of the committee what they could or could not ask.
I would also point out that the chair was utterly silent when the exact same line of questioning was put by members on the government side and called for comments on exactly the same issue.