Members of Congress call on Gov. Rick Snyder, EPA chief Gina McCarthy to resign over Flint

Several lawmakers asked Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and EPA Chief Gina McCarthy to resign Thursday during a testy hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The committee is investigating how the Flint water crisis came to be and why it wasn't handled sooner, and going along partisan lines, the Democrats focused on grilling Snyder, while McCarthy received the ire of Republicans, ABC News reports. Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) called on McCarthy to follow in the footsteps of the EPA official over the Midwest region who stepped down in January, and said "if the EPA doesn't know when to step in and ensure a community has safe drinking water, I'm not sure why it exists at all."

Reps. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called on Snyder to resign, with Cummings saying: "The governor's fingerprints are all over this. It looks like almost everyone knew about this problem but you. You were missing in action. That's not leadership." Both Snyder and McCarthy pointed their fingers at each other, with Snyder saying the EPA's "inefficient, ineffective, and unaccountable bureaucrats" let the disaster "continue unnecessarily." McCarthy said it all comes down to state officials, with the crisis the result of "a state-appointed emergency manager deciding that the city would stop purchasing treated drinking water and instead switch to an untreated source to save money."

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