Not what I expected to hear

Last Friday night as I was flipping between TV channels (my wife was not home so I had total control of the remote and could flip as much as I wanted to) I caught a portion of the testimony by the Secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, and the Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker before the House Appropriations Committee. I was surprised at the rapport I saw between the committee and the Sec Army and CSA. I got the impression the committee was pretty much ready to provide levels of funding being requested by the Army, but only if such could be well substantiated. I was also impressed by the sort of questioning of some Democratic committee members (John Murtha for example). He seemed very knowledgeable about what Army requirements are, and gave me a much different (better) view of his position from what I had expected. Other committee members asked equally good questions. Better still, Secretary Harvey and General Schoomaker gave very candid and complete responses, with no hint of defensiveness. I watched for about an hour and as I changed the channel I thought to myself that things are not as bad in Congress as I may have thought.