Cummings’s rhetoric was characteristic of lawmakers’ tone at Thursday’s hearing. Snyder and McCarthy were both asked, strongly and repeatedly, to resign. The two officials, for their part, blamed each other: The governor faulted the EPA for its slow and “ineffective” response, while McCarthy took aim at state officials for obfuscating the poor water quality. Both also suggested they weren’t fully aware of the problem’s scope until far too late.

Lawmakers pushed back on the notion that McCarthy and Snyder weren’t aware earlier on. The timeline of their public actions, though, is more clear. The crisis in Flint began back in April 2014, when the city’s water source switched from Detroit’s water system to the local Flint River. My colleague David Graham explained in February that the “Flint River’s water, which has a higher chloride content than the water from Lake Huron that Detroit uses, corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes, bringing the metal into the water supply—a problem that continues even after Flint went back to the Detroit system.” For much of that time, Flint’s residents continued to use and drink the water, and children exhibited high levels of lead in their blood. State officials repeatedly downplayed suspicions that the water was unsafe.

Residents were ordered to stop drinking Flint’s water shortly before the supply switched back to the Detroit water system, in October. That same month, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality said the water hadn’t been treated with anti-corrosive phosphates; McCarthy said the DEQ had previously told her agency the water was being treated.

In January, nearly a year after an EPA scientist first flagged the lead problem, Snyder declared a state of emergency, and the EPA issued an emergency order “to make sure that the necessary actions to protect public health happen immediately.” The agency had the authority to do so under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which says the EPA can move in when people are in imminent danger and state and local government officials haven’t adequately acted.

Snyder’s testimony was widely anticipated. Not only did Democratic lawmakers insist on his resignation, but he’s faced similar requests from Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who attended a debate in Flint earlier this month focused on the city’s crisis. His appearance wasn’t always on the committee’s agenda. Chairman Jason Chaffetz was criticized for not inviting Snyder to an earlier hearing, but Snyder soon volunteered himself to appear. Republican lawmakers repeatedly praised that decision on Thursday.

Ahead of the hearing, Cummings told reporters that “the person I think might have the most responsibility is certainly the governor,” and many of his fellow Democrats on the panel clearly agreed. Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, said Snyder’s government has placed a “stain” on the country, and he accused the committee—presumably its Republicans—for protecting Snyder.