I also want to quote another statement, where I said, “Will we examine it”—“it” refers to the witness list—“and consider it as a committee and agree on which witnesses to invite or not?” The chair said yes.
And then, Mr. Chair, you said:
We may have to do that, the clerk and I, two members, without a meeting, if you want to go ahead with the meeting on the 29th and we can't get the witnesses you're talking about.
I responded by saying, “As long as we're all consulted on the witness list.”
And the chair said, “Sure. The clerk will do that. Agreed?”
I want to highlight that there was an explicit agreement that any new witnesses could not be added to the list without discussion with committee members. It's human nature to respond to such a unilateral act by becoming obstructionist, but because we're responsible and we want to hear from the witnesses today, we're going to agree. But we want to record our objection that this was an inexplicable action by the chair. I don't know why a witnesses was added, even though it was explicitly agreed....
Today we have a limited time to hear from witnesses. I'd like to have a commitment that if Ms. Keen agrees, the committee will be cooperative to invite her back again. That is a way that I think we can proceed. Even though Ms. Keen will only get an hour today, we could invite her back if we need to.
Thank you.