Republicans gave Democrats a powerful weapon

Congress

A GOP rule change has conferred the authority of unilateral assignment to many House committee chairs. Democrats have cried foul, but now they hope to use it against Trump.

Democrats wanting to investigate the Trump administration if they seize the House, the GOP must thank him for one of their most powerful tools: a surrender authority that Democratic legislators have denounced as a takeover. Abusive power three years ago.

Republicans in the House changed the rules in 2015 to allow many of the chairs of their committees to issue subpoenas without consulting the minority party, removing the objections of Democrats who equated tactics with something the McCarthy era.

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Now, the weapon that the GOP has used dozens of times against Barack Obama's agencies could allow Democrats to bomb the most controversial candidates of President Donald Trump with requests for information. And many Democrats are eager to use it.

"Republicans have set the standard and, by God, we will emulate that standard," said Representative Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) At POLITICO.

Control would be one of the few concrete goals that Democrats can achieve with the control of just one House of Congress and Trump still in the White House. They have a long list of potential goals, including likely requests for Trump's tax returns and surveys of Cabinet members such as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. and Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke.

Prior to the 2015 rule change, most subpoenas in the House needed at least two-party coverage, requiring a majority vote of the committee members and consultation with the panel member. The change removed these requirements and allowed the chairs to proceed unilaterally, although the exact rules vary from one committee to the other.

According to the Congressional Research Service, 14 of the 21 Standing Committees of the House allow their chairs to issue subpoenas on their own initiative.

Officially, House Democrats have not said whether they would retain the subpoena authority if they were at the helm. But three years ago, Democrats called the abusive rights movement the rights of the minority and break with generations of traditions – an attack that they say would have long-term consequences. term.

"This creates a terrible precedent and will likely become a permanent fixture of the committee," said Frank Pallone, New Jersey's top Democratic representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee, at a hearing. held in January 2015. "I think the authority of assignment is a powerful authority and should only be used as a last resort."

Sixteen members of the Democratic Party criticized this decision in a February 2015 letter, warning that the decision referred to the "abusive model" of unilateral assignment used by former senators, Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the presidents of the House, Dan Burton and Darrell Issa.

Even some Republicans feared that the power to assign committee chairs would come back to haunt them.

"I thought it was a mistake at the time, but they did," said POLITICO, Rep. Outgoing, Joe Barton (R-Texas). "It's a powerful tool that needs to be voted on or bipartisan."

But such warnings fell on deaf ears, amid accusations by the GOP that Obama agencies were blocking or slowing down their surveillance efforts.

House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who launched dozens of subpoenas to appear before the Obama administration, was one of the most aggressive. He requested recordings on text messages from Gina McCarthy, then a director of the Environmental Protection Agency, about two state attorneys general and environmental advocacy groups, to determine whether Exxon Mobil had misled investors about the risks of climate change and emails about a study on others.

A spokesman for Smith did not respond to requests for comment, but he boasted at the September 2016 hearing that he had issued "25 assignments and that" he was still counting subpoenas in his first year and a half of holding this power. Prior to 2015, the committee had not issued any subpoenas for 21 years.

"The summonses to appear before Congress should be used sparingly," Smith said at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in October 2017. "However, their use has become the norm because of the lack of privacy." And obstruction of our efforts to obtain basic information about public safety, science and research.

The Smith panel was certainly not the only one.

In 2015, House Financial Services President Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) used the unilateral power of summons for the first time in 150 years of existence, raising objections from the Democratic Committee Maxine Waters from California. The Maryland representative, Elijah Cummings, the largest House Democrat, complained that the hundred or so Issa far exceeded the 78 assignments that the Republican and Democrat leaders of this group had sent between 2003 and 2010 – rarely without the support of the minority.

A Democratic assistant in the House said that Mrs. Waters would probably want to summon the Trump administration if she became president of the financial services in January. But his decision whether to retain the unilateral power to do so may depend on the size of the majority of Democrats after the election and whether the Democrats on committees want to have a record of the votes to appear.

Representative Raul Grijalva (D-N.M), who is expected to appear before the Committee on Natural Resources in a Democratic House, stopped abruptly in an interview in September, saying he would continue his unilateral subpoenas. But he acknowledged that "it's the next logical step" if the administration does not comply with Democrats' demands for control.

Many Democrats argue that Republicans are only responsible for arming the subpoena process and that their own party should not disarm unilaterally now that power has been released.

"What's happening is there," said former representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). "Would I expect that they give up the unilateral power of the president?" And I do not think they should do it. "

This is not the uniform view of all party members. Representative Bill Foster (D-Ill.) Led a group of 38 Democrats in a letter of October 2016 urging GOP leaders to give up power at the next Congress. he told POLITICO that he still thought that presidents should not have it.

"I would continue to oppose the power of unilateral summons," Foster said in a statement. "During my term in Congress, I saw the majority party using this power to compel people to testify who differ from committee chairs on policy issues. It should be expected that committees will vote on a subpoena to determine whether the committee is issuing a subpoena. "

Zachary Warmbrodt contributed to this report