GOP made it easier to subpoena presidential administrations in 2015. Now Democrats have that power.
What a Democratic majority could mean for the Trump administration.
JOSH ISRAEL
NOV 7, 2018, 8:09 AM
Back in 2015, the House Republican majority changed the rules in the House to make it easier for them to subpoena the Obama administration. Rather than involve members of the Democratic minority in the process at all, they simply authorized their own committee chairs to unilaterally issue subpoenas to anyone they wished.
Come January, that may well come back to haunt the dwindling number of Republicans left in the U.S. House of Representatives. The result: for the first time, Donald Trump and his administration may soon face some real oversight.
Unlike some legislative bodies, the House essentially works on simple majority rule. With 218 votes, the majority does not need a single vote from the minority to issue subpoenas for testimony and documents — or to change its own rules. This means that after two years with largely no scrutiny at all, the Trump administration could soon be forced to be transparent with the American public about its conflicts of interest, compliance with the law, and myriad examples of corruption.
“Most, if not all, current congressional committees have utterly failed in their oversight responsibilities of the current administration,” Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, told ThinkProgress. “Democratic ranking members have requested information from the executive branch and most of those requests for information are being ignored.” A Democratic majority, he predicts, will “be able to put teeth behind those information requests [and] have more administration officials testify before the relevant committees to help fulfill the checks and balances that are largely absent from the current Republican Congress.”
https://thinkprogress.org/so-the-house-democrats-just-won-subpoena-power-now-what-41bc228e7715/
We are coming trump.............................
......................and we will have the last laugh, and we will save our democracy.......................
= new reply since forum marked as read
