Honorable Thompson's opposition began with his perspective that it is not necessary for a Congressional Committee to be entrusted with the investigation. He compared Congress being permitted to investigate the government's preparedness to a fox guarding a hen house, in which he stated that the government is not safeguarding what needs to be safeguarded. He strongly believed that instead of establishing a Congressional Committee, there should be an independent assessment of where the government went wrong. As the Ranking Minority Member of the Homeland Security Committee, he submitted a document outlining the complexity of the problems regarding what happened during Hurricane Katrina and the need for an independent assessment.