Many are criticizing the Democrats for their aggressive barrage of subpoenas and upcoming contempt citations. Saturday, Peggy Noonan joined those who find the tactics of the Democrats to be disturbing. Her argument is that Trump supporters will not be moved. “It will not move any needle.” Moreover, she argues that “to take all of Congress’s time attacking the President, or impeaching him, will be experienced as [a]n insult by half the country …. It will keep good keep things, such as an infrastructure bill from happening.
Some of this rings true. Trump supporters seem to cast blind eyes on all sorts of corruption. In addition, it is unlikely that Trump will support an infrastructure bill, so long as Congress insists on exercising its constitutional duty of oversight. To my mind, however, oversight is not only a constitutional duty, but also a moral duty. We know the Trump administration is corrupt, but the depth of that corruption has not been fully exposed. Noonan’s claim that the needle will not be moved ignores the fact that Democratic turnout depends upon a belief that Congress has met its constitutional and moral duty.
Finally, it is preposterous to suppose that oversight “would take all of Congress’s time.” Just this last week the House passed a bill designed to override the Administration’s efforts to permit citizens to be disadvantaged in medical insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions. Six more progressive health bills are scheduled to be passed in the House. Of course, Mitch McConnell will not permit the most important of these bills to get to the floor of the Senate. Cable news has done a good job of covering the Trump investigation and some of the differences between Democratic candidates, but it needs to do more to discuss the differences between House Democrats and Senate Republicans on issues such as health, climate, women’s equality, and voter suppression.
Many leading Democrats believe impeachment is morally required. I will leave that issue to the side. At the very least, House Democrats need to censure Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the other Senate Republicans who enable the corruption of the Trump administration and the undermining of our American form of democracy.
Any such censure should include the fact that Trump has committed numerous impeachable offenses and detail them. The public also needs to understand that House oversight has not gotten in the way of passing bills to help the American people, and if the media needs a news hook to do a better job, a House censure focusing on the many bills blocked by McConnell will focus attention.
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